Superjail: Upward Spiral
by yensid365
Summary: The Warden has reached a breaking point. He can no longer control the chaos, or mask his inner turmoils with rainbows and prisoners' blood. He wishes fill his lifelong emotional void, and finally obtain true peace of mind. His father's ghost returns to reclaim his place as the prison and family mogul, but one other soul will stop at nothing to save the Warden once and for all.
1. Disillusionment

_From childhood's hour I have not been_

_As others were—I have not seen_

_As others saw—I could not bring_

_My passions from a common spring—_

_From the same source I have not taken_

_My sorrow—I could not awaken_

_My heart to joy at the same tone—_

_And all I lov'd—I lov'd alone—_

_Then—in my childhood—in the dawn_

_Of a most stormy life—was drawn_

_From ev'ry depth of good and ill_

_The mystery which binds me still—_

_From the torrent, or the fountain—_

_From the red cliff of the mountain—_

_From the sun that 'round me roll'd_

_In its autumn tint of gold—_

_From the lightning in the sky_

_As it pass'd me flying by—_

_From the thunder, and the storm—_

_And the cloud that took the form_

_(When the rest of Heaven was blue)_

_Of a demon in my view.  
- _"Alone" by Edgar Allen Poe

WHAM! A gavel slammed on the wooden pedestal, and in a matter of seconds, the lucky bidder, a middle-aged brunette, was carrying his prize with both hands, a white ceramic vase that was decorated with the most elaborate emeralds, rubies, and diamonds across its base and side handles.

The ring man, a ginger in his mid 40s, dressed in a black suit, pointed at the next item available for the auction: a dozen gold bricks stacked into a pyramid sitting on a wheeled cart. In the midst of the sea of hands waving their numbered signs in the air, one hand aimed a silver pistol at the ceiling. In only a few simple shots, the crowd of bidders desperately fled to the nearest doors, leaving the shooter, Jack Knife, the only remaining soul left in the audience. After reducing the ring man to a blood-covered body riddled with bullets, Jack raced to the cart carrying the stacks of gold, and proceeded to push it toward a wooden double door with a red neon EXIT glowing above. Just as Jack was ready to embrace the sweet smell of gold and freedom with sneering eyes and a jagged-toothed smile, a very familiar robotic face popped out from the front of the tray. Its metal claws reached out from underneath the cart's front legs, and clasped onto the wheels tight, forcing the cart to come to an extremely abrupt halt. The impact sent Jack sailing across the room, screaming in terror. In the span of five seconds, he left a gaping hole on the double-doors that was shaped like his entire body. Then some more as he sailed past the doors, and flew through the wall of a men's restroom. Then, a painting gallery, from which a painting of a donkey was caught around his neck, his head sticking out between the butt-cheeks of the jackass's ass. Finally, after startling some elderly women flying through a ladies' restroom, even causing all of them to die of acute heart failures, Jack's escapade was broken by a white concrete wall. His entire body splatted like a human pancake, covered in bruises and lacerations across his entire body. The disoriented criminal pulled his flattened face off the wall, and turned around, first in a daze of spinning stars around his head, and then, suddenly, in sheer horror, of what would be the final insult to his immense injuries. The bricks of gold had flown off the tray as well, only half a second after Jack was sent flying, and were now making their crash-landing all over Jack's face, spinal column, rear end, and legs, finishing him off in a cruel, yet surprisingly appropriate, touch of bitter irony.

With a pained groan, Jack plopped on his back against the floor, too dizzy and beaten to carry on any farther. Jailbot promptly reassembled to his original form, and zipped through the gaping holes, knocking over and slicing innocent bystanders with his blade-hands without a trace of hesitation. He then activated the helicopter blades from his head, and proceeded to lift Jack off into the air, leaving an enormous hole of his own through the ceiling, and leaving several dozen, blood-soaked bodies of middle-aged and elderly men and women strewn in all the rooms that Jack had destroyed.

-

Much to Jack Knife's surprise, Jailbot carried him right over the roof of the Superjail cells, and out into the front courtyard, near the giant metal double doors that were shut tight. What was usually bare, gray, gravel ground was now lined with rows and rows of white folding chairs, divided by a long, red carpet down the center. The seats were filled with other inmates, all dressed in dapper, black suits instead of their typical orange jumpsuits. Jailbot flew Jack over the last remaining seat in the back row and pulled a new suit of his inventory. He then used his laser vision to disintegrate Jack's own clothes into ashes, and, sparing his eyes of the vision of seeing a naked Jack Knife, slipped the criminal into his new tuxedo, and placed him gently on his seat with his robot hands.

Whatever Superjail had planned for everyone, it sure seemed significant. No one had recognized the wooden stage sitting before them, no doubt another rush-order from the man-child upstairs. There was a wooden podium on the far left, similar to the one used at the live auction Jack had just tried to rob from, and nailed to its center was a large wreath decorated with pure white roses. Even farther down the left, just ten feet away from the stage, was the pipe organ that once served as the Warden's Dream Machine, now restored back to its original function to play melodic tunes instead of playing with one's subconscious. Gary and Bird were both at the seat, practicing "Chopin's Funeral March" in A minor, with Gary at the keys, and Bird pulling and pushing the necessary knobs and levers needed to play the song properly. As if that weren't already a dead giveaway as to what this arrangement was for, there was one elephant in the room that hit Jack Knife, well, as if an actual elephant had placed its gigantic rear end on top of his fragile face: a black coffin on a wheeled cart that Alice was pushing down the red carpet aisle.

It was a very peculiar notion to think that Superjail would ever hold funerals for anyone who worked or served time there. The place was a house of death in its own right, with their manager's antics resulting in mass casualties every day since the prison's inception. When did the staff ever acknowledge the loss of any single inmate, let alone the loss of hundreds? What kind of remorse, or even respect, have they ever shown for the numerous lives they had taken as result of their boss's carelessness? Never, pure and simple. Even some of the management's closest associates were secretly questioning the logic of this situation, or, more appropriately, the lack thereof. Alice had taken the courtesy to wear an elongated black gown to the ceremony, as opposed to the more scantily-clad attire she would've dressed into whenever she wasn't in her work uniform, and even wore a miniature black veil to drape over her glasses. However, Alice was not the type of person to complain about her boss's demands. She knew there wasn't the slightest bit of sense in how he ran his prison, but she seldom made her made her voice heard, unless it directly impacted her personally, such as the occasions where her job was affected because of her employer's shenanigans. For the most part, she simply shrugged off the mayhem and chaos surrounding her as if it didn't matter to her. As long as she remained happy with her position as a guard, and was respected as a female trying to escape her male body, nothing else bothered her in the slightest, no matter how much of the inmates' blood poured onto her.

If there was anyone at all willing to speak their voice of reason within this mad house, it was, undoubtedly, Jared.

The bottle-headed accountant was currently scanning through a stack of papers haphazardly attached to his clipboard, checking off the statements with his pen as he was muttering the notes to himself.

"Ok, uh, let's see...paid for the repairs for the organ, got the money for the flowers, set up the catering for the reception, and made our first down-payment for the coffin and tombstone bundle package at the funeral home! Looks like everything's in order."

Everything's in order. Even Jared couldn't fool himself with that kind of malarkey. The only time the word "order" was ever associated with Superjail was either to describe the complete lack of it, or whenever his boss felt like playing mock trial for the inmates, which was really more of an excuse for him to hit Jared with his gavel until he got his desired verdict. Asking the Warden to understand the legal system was like asking a two-year-old to perform perfect Calculus; it was an impossible expectation for someone with a mind that underdeveloped, or, in the Warden's case, ill.

At least Jared believed he had a good reason to smile in this particular situation. "I wasn't sure we were gonna get the right funds this time, but at least it's all for a very noble cause: remembering a good friend."

Just then, another funeral guest approached Jared: Charice of Ultraprison. She was currently wearing a black gown with a pair of black gloves, and a tiny black bonnet that rested on the top of her towering hairdo. In her right hand was a parchment scroll that rolled out five feet long, all filled with lines of cursive text. Charice was perfectly aware of the levity of an event as solemn as a funeral, but she maintained her usual friendliness and gracious demeanor with a smile that rounded the corners of her tiny lips.

"I'm looking forward to reciting our eulogy during the ceremony, Jared."

Charice frowned for a moment in somberness, but switched back to her grin when the more positive aspect of this scenario returned to her mind. "It's terribly sad that the Doctor committed suicide, but I'll always remember how knowing him has brought us closer together."

She then gave her boyfriend a petite peck on the cheek, and in return, Jared held her left hand and kissed her face. "Don't I know it, honey bunch?"

Charice eagerly took her seat on the fifth seat to the right in the front row as Jared climbed on top of a wooden barstool behind the podium so he could see the audience before him. The coffin had been placed horizontally at the front, between the stage and the first row of seats. Alice was standing at the left of the coffin, leaning back against the front of the stage.

Jared gently tapped a silver microphone that was sitting on the desk of the podium. "Ahem! M-May I have your attention please, everyone?"

All the inmates had their eyes on their manager's accountant now. Most of them kept an expression of complete disinterest, but a few displayed genuine reverence to the loss of the Doctor, such as Jean trying to comfort Paul, who was already weeping into a white handkerchief he'd pulled out from the pocket of his mourning gown. Ash, too, was already shedding his "steam works," accidentally setting his bouquet of lilies on fire in the middle of his crying fit.

Jared cleared his throat. "We are gathered here today to pay tribute to the life of a very dear employee among the Superjail staff. He served his duties in this prison with ambition and intelligence like no other, except the Warden, maybe. That man is none other than our dear friend…"

Upon this sentence, Alice opened up the front hatch of the coffin to reveal the face of the deceased.

"The Good Doct-"

Jared gasped, and the rest of the crowd immediately followed. The coffin was completely empty!

Rivers of sweat ran down Jared's gigantic forehead, and his eyes looked as though they could burst out of its sockets from the immense anxiety. "WHERE'S THE DOCTOR'S BODY?!"

-

The corpse of Herr Doctor lay unceremoniously on one of his metal patient tables, in the middle of what was a very ceremoniously decorated version of one of his old laboratories, the area where he once did experiments with gene splicing and combining dismembered body parts into whole grotesque creatures. However, where his beakers, toolbox, knives, and other equipment lay on the shelves and tables of the lab, there were, instead, an array of purple candles on each tabletop. The tables, desks, cots, and wheeled trays on which the candles sat were arranged in such a way that they formed the closest shape resembling a circle that an array of rectangular trays would allow, as though one were trying to make a ring out of twigs.

Behind the ring of flickering candlelights, a pair of yellow, shifting eyes appeared up in the darkness, a mere 20 inches away from the Doctor's bald, bumpy head. An ecstatic, yet focused Warden slithered up to the Doctor's body, his own torso and limbs noodling under the tables and trays like a snake, and then propping himself on his feet as if said snake had grown its own pair of limbs. With a wide, gap-toothed smile, the Warden rolled up his purple sleeves, and pulled up with his left hand a vintage book with the words "Spells of Satan" embossed in red metal against the black leather cover.

Warden opened up the middle section of the book, his right pointer finger scanning down the lines of text.

"Let's see here. A bit of of the victim's brain…"

A smile grew across the Warden's face as gave the Doctor's skull a hearty smash with a work hammer, reducing his cranium to shattered fragments of bone sprinkled across his grey matter. Warden then slipped on a pair of yellow, rubber gloves into his already-gloved hands, and used a pair of safety scissors to snip off a square-inch of gummy, grey tissue from the Doctor's cerebral cortex. Stretching his right leg five feet long, the Warden took a giant step toward a black cauldron planted the same distance southwest from the Doctor's body. It was already bubbling the standard green ooze that one would normally expect in a sort of witch's brew (or maniacal wizard in the Warden's case), but the moment the fragment of brain entered the concoction, the boiling goo began to turn a shining pink-purple. The Warden's eyes nearly popped with excitement, and with an overjoyed chuckle, he raced back to the Doctor's body, and opened up the book pages again.

"All righty. Next up…a single vein from his heart…"

The Warden pulled out a clean shiv from his right pocket. This time, his smile switched from child-like giddiness to that of a much more sinister nature. Warden always felt a personal sense of might when he'd gotten hold of a deadly weapon, and with that newfound vigor coursing through his veins, Warden plunged the blade into the Doctor's abs with all his might, sending splatters of blood flying across his face and suit. He then ripped the flesh open to a three-inch gash, revealing internal organs such as the Doctor's windpipe, lungs, stomach, and even his heart.

The Warden's eyes and smile widened. He was about to reach the fingers of his rubber-gloved hand into the narrow openings of the Doctor's rib cage, but they were too big to grab the heart. The Warden whined and grunted in frustration as he tried reaching his hand through the opening near the clavicle, and then up through the bottom of the cage, where his stomach, liver and lungs were blocking him from reaching the heart.

"C'mon…stupid organs…Aha!"

Warden snapped his fingers, and grabbed a bone saw that was lying on the floor. He pressed one hand down against the rib cage while the other rubbed the jagged blade across the ringed bones. He had succeeded in slicing off three ribs, but, in the process, he'd accidentally stabbed the blade into the heart as well.

"Oops."

Warden pulled the saw out with the heart still inserted into the top of the blade, blood pooling from the organ onto the floor. His lips flattened with disgust as well as embarrassment for needlessly skewering the heart. Fortunately for him, he could see one of the arteries sticking out of it like a twig, and with another snip of the safety scissors, he had an inch of the vein in the palm of his gloved hand. Satisfied with his success, the Warden shoved the heart back through the hole he'd made from slicing off part of the ribs, not even bothering to remove the saw that was still stuck inside. He then held the vein three feet over the cauldron, and watched with wide eyes as it plunked into the boiling ooze. With the two ingredients now in the mix, the liquid changed from purplish-pink to a glowing red-orange.

The Warden pumped his left fist. "Yes!"

He then zipped back to the Doctor's body, opening the book once more.

"And finally, a pint of blood to serve as fuel for his life…"

The Warden scoffed. "As if I didn't get a ton of blood already just from getting the first two body parts! Now the question is, where do I pour it into?"

Warden searched across the lab looking for some sort of container until a flash of yellow light glistened from the southwest corner of the room. The Warden's eyes inflated into foot-tall ovals, his pupils taking up half the white space inside them. "Oooooh!"

A single metal barrel sat isolated from the trays, tables, and other equipment in the lab. It was coated with yellow-orange chrome, and gave off enough bright-yellow light to attract a hundred mosquitoes, if given the chance. There was also a foreboding, black trefoil symbol that had been spray-painted on the front and back side of the barrel's cylindrical base.

The Warden raced up to the drum of radioactive waste, admiring his reflection against the chrome. "Shiny and sturdy, two of my favorite things!"

In a puff purple smoke, the Warden shapeshifted into a three-foot-tall, purple crowbar, his face and top hat placed on the top handle while the curved end pried the lid open. The minute it was tipped off the rim and sent down to the floor, Warden noticed the bright-green sludge stewing inside the barrel, and winced in repugnance. With another poof, Warden returned to his human form, but was now wearing a purple hazmat suit, complete with a rectangular plastic mask that shielded his entire face. Breathing in a Darth Vader-esque fashion, Warden grabbed the barrel's base with both hands, and poured all the green goo down a nearby sewage drain on the floor. The poison from the radiation disintegrated the drain's metal grid until it was reduced to a thin ring circling the edge of the now-open sewer hole.

As usual, the Warden was not one to focus on small details. He gave the barrel one last shake over the drain, letting out the last few drips of waste. "That takes care of that."

Sadly, the Warden was undeniably wrong. Because he'd neglected to look inside the barrel to see if it was truly empty, he failed to notice the tiny, yet visible, glowing smudges of green goop dotted at the bottom, still sticking to the metal surface despite the Warden's forceful shaking and leaning the barrel forward.

With that seemingly minor detail overlooked, the Warden poofed out of his radiation suit, back to his purple tuxedo and top hat, and grabbed the Doctor's shoulders with both hands, yanking him off the table to look as though he was standing on his own two feet. After a quick cracking of his gloved knuckles, the Warden took the Doctor's arms, and with a few strained groans, forced the forearms out of position so that they looked like a round handle made of two hands holding each other. The Warden ignored the humerus and radius bones protruding out of the Doctor's flesh, and ever-so-lightly tipped the the Doctor's body over the barrel. The Doctor's jaw then dropped open, and a waterfall of blood streamed out from his mouth into the container. Essentially, the Warden had obtained the ingredient for his formula by treating the corpse of his dear friend like a human pitcher.

Warden waited until the barrel was filled to the brim with blood. He then leaned the Doctor's body back toward the table, still keeping a smile on his face. "I think that's enough blood for now."

Warden hastily pulled the Doctor's arms out of their handle shape, and simply allowed them to flop on top of his belly, not paying the least bit of attention to the bones and strings of muscle tissue still sticking out of them. With another zip across the room, Warden carried the barrel back toward the cauldron, and poured every last drop of blood and radioactive sludge into the mixture, resting the heavy barrel on top of the pot's black rim. Warden then tossed the empty barrel over his shoulder, and watched with intense anticipation as every single inch of the mixture's liquid surface was coated with frothing bubbles.

"Yes...yes...c'mon..."

The cauldron then began to shake and tremble, which quickly escalated into violent thrashing and jerking, prompting the Warden to take a few steps back. Finally, the cauldron's entire body squatted down against the floor, then violently stretched back up, spewing out the red-orange concoction with an ear-jerking "BURP!"

With astonishingly precise aim, the gallon of liquid spouted clean out of the cauldron, and splashed on top of the Doctor's mangled corpse, soaking every inch of his skin, bones, and organs with a coat of vermillion. A mere two seconds later, the Doctor began to levitate two feet off the table, floating into the air with his back still flat. The Warden bit his lower lip hard, shaking his fists together and jumping up and down like an overly elated fangirl. The Doctor's body stopped for a moment, now hovering seven feet above the table. Then, all of a sudden, it began to jerk and convulse on its own, very quickly changing into a multitude of bizarre positions and facial expressions. His hands jerked and clawed in the air as the rest of him wiggled and writhed in a violent, yet cartoonish, fashion. Suddenly, at the last second, the Doctor, still in midair, froze into one position, where his eyes were bulging straight upward, and his fatty arms, chest, and legs constricted with tension. Then, two rings of boiling, green, radioactive waste rose from the Doctor's body, one at the soles of his shoes, the other from the top of his head. They both made their way across the Doctor's corpse, reducing all the bones, flesh, organs, and clothing that they passed through into a shower of falling dust.

The Warden's expression quickly switched from utter delight to intense dismay. "NO! NO NO NO NO NO!"

The Warden watched with dread as the corpse of his dear friend was being consumed by the rings of green waste. They made their way down his head, up his legs, and then both came together at the middle of his torso. The second they reached physical contact, the two rings formed together into one large handful of goop, plunged back to the ground, and splashed all over the Doctor's ashy remains. He was now reduced to clumps of green sludge coated with dust.

The Warden poofed back into his radiation suit, and rushed to the scene of the disaster. He tried picking up the bits of dust and sludge on the floor and mashing them together, hoping that would somehow bring his old pal back. Tears and drops of sweat sprinkled against the plastic shield that blocked his face. "NO! NO NO NO! PLEASE, NO!"

Having no success with his hasty attempts of reversing his grave mistake, the Warden smashed both fists onto the ground, and let out a devastated, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Just then, in a moment of impeccable timing, Jared arrived at the scene, riding a white shuttle service trolley on the metal pathway around the gaping entry of the lab. He was driving the cart at full throttle, and then slammed the brakes to a screeching halt the second he spotted the weeping Warden.

The panicked accountant shimmied down a metal ladder to the lower level of the lab to meet up with his boss. "Sir, there's a terrible problem at the funeral! The Doctor's body is _GONE!"_

Warden sniffled, arched his back upwards, and removed the entire helmet and mask portion of his suit off his shoulders, revealing his despondent face. "Yes it is, Jared. I tried to bring him back with this old spell book I thought for _sure_ would work!" Warden slammed his fists on the floor again, sending blots of waste flying onto Jared's face, but, surprisingly, not a drop on his own. "And now, his body's been reduced to a just pile of disgusting mush..."

At that very instant, the splotches of green slime on Jared's face began to sprout its own mutations! Now Jared had a snapping lobster claw growing out of his forehead, and a new set of beetle pincers the size of hedge sheers coming out of his his left cheek. Jared shrieked, and tried to wipe the waste off his face, but it had no affect on his newfound appendages. To make matters worse, the goop that was now coating his entire right hand started bubbling as well, and a two-foot-long, purple octopus tentacle, complete with an array of suction cups, protruded out of where his right hand used to be!

Jared screamed in terror. "SIR, THIS 'MUSH' IS RADIOACTIVE WASTE!"

Warden rolled his eyes, completely overlooking Jared's hideous mutations. "Well, duh, Jared! Why else would I be wearing this tacky-looking, rubber suit that itches like crazy?!" He groaned, scratching his back and armpits.

Jared's eyebrows narrowed. "You tried to resurrect the Doctor's body with poisonous _radiation?!"_

Warden scoffed and waved his right hand down in dismissal. "Of course, not, Jared! I didn't _mean_ for that radioacti-whatever to get on him! Must've been left over from the barrel I used to store his blood." Warden pointed to said barrel where Jared could get a good look at it.

At this point, Jared was so perturbed that he couldn't even articulate complete sentences. "B-B-BUT YOU...A-AND THE FUNERAL...F-FOR THE DOCTOR-"

The Warden stood back up, and proceeded to give another one of his passionate speeches. "Yeah, the funeral idea seemed like a good one at the time of the Doctor's suicide, but then I remembered how dreary and boring those stupid ceremonies really are." On the second half of that sentence, Warden turned his radiation suit into a black tuxedo, and, with a couple more poofs, made a church pew simultaneously appear under his rear end, and a bouquet of white lilies in the grip of his left hand. He leaned backward against the pew, resting the back of his right hand on his forehead with exasperation. He then switched back to his hazmat suit, and continued preaching, this time in a more menacing tone of voice.

"So I decided to _liven_ things up a bit, pardon the pun, and use a much more fun tactic to try and bring him back from the dead!" The Warden showed Jared the section of the book where he had found the spell. Jared tried to hold it as best as his normal left hand, and tentacle right hand would allow, which was quite difficult considering his tentacle was four times longer than his human hand. The lobster claw on his forehead scanned down the words and turned the pages.

"If I didn't get that stupid radiation stuff in the recipe, it would've worked!" On the word "worked," Warden kicked the barrel in frustration, but then quickly grabbed his right foot, jumping up and down on his other leg. "YEOW! Oooh ow ow ow ow ow ow!"

Warden sat down and took off his right shoe, revealing five swollen toes pulsing from the pain. "Hey, Jared, gimmie a few ice cubes or something, will ya, pal? Ooh, and a lollipop! I always like to treat myself when I get a boo-boo."

Jared had endured a plethora of bizarre situations during his time in Superjail. From the moment he first saw Superjail, he could tell it didn't run on the slightest bit of logic or reason that he had seen from civilian jails (and not just because this prison existed in an alternate dimension miles from reality.) However, in ways that even he himself couldn't explain, Jared had somehow been able to survive every single catastrophe caused by the Warden's antics. From growing into a monstrous Jared-Hulk, to temporarily living with a body made of random limbs, to having his office destroyed by race cars, even to the day Ash and Warden set Superjail on fire, and, literally, allowed all Hell to break loose. No matter what disaster occurred as a result of the Warden's selfish, hasty, utterly irrational decisions, there was always some way in which he and his colleagues would miraculously solve each crisis, and eventually restore Superjail back to the amount of chaos it was accustomed to.

Today, however, was completely different. The amount of insanity and depravity Jared was seeing from his boss now was far beyond any he'd ever experienced before.

Jared's bulbous cranium turned a fiery shade of red. Streams of sweat were flowing down from his scalp to the bottom of his chin, where they dripped to the ground like rain down a gutter. He gritted his teeth so hard that cracks were starting to form around the enamel, and his glaring, bloodshot eyes were bulging out so wide that even the veins coating each eyeball became visible on the outside.

For better or worse, the Warden kept his back turned as his assistant was fuming with fury. He was massaging his bruised toes with a puppy-dog pout on his face, which then promptly switched to an expression of annoyance. "Hello? I don't see a lollipop in my hand, Jared!"

"I...DON'T...BELIEVE YOU!"

As Jared screamed the last word of his sentence, his entire scalp, brown hair and all, popped off his head like a lid, releasing a gaping cloud of steam from his rattled brain. When his "lid" plopped back down on his head, Jared stood face-to-face with his boss, now that the Warden was sitting low enough for him to meet his assistant's glaring eyes.

"I CAN UNDERSTAND HAVING NO SYMPATHY FOR THE DEATHS OF HUNDREDS OF MURDERERS AND RAPISTS, BUT _THE DOCTOR?!_ ONE OF YOUR MOST TRUSTED EMPLOYEES, WHO COMMITTED SUICIDE BECAUSE OF ANOTHER DISASTER THAT _YOU _CAUSED?! I'D THINK YOU'D HAVE THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF RESPECT FOR THOSE WHO LOOKED UP TO YOU THE MOST!"

The Warden sneered, slipped his shoe back on, and rose up on two feet so he could, literally and figuratively, look down on Jared. "Are you saying that it's _MY_ fault that the Doctor's dead?!"

"YES!" Jared screeched. "YES, GOD DAMMIT, IT _IS!_ AND TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, YOU DEMANDED THAT I MAKE ALL THESE EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE, LAST-MINUTE PREPARATIONS FOR A HASTILY PUT-TOGETHER FUNERAL, WHICH NOW WE CAN'T EVEN PUT ON BECAUSE YOU DESTROYED THE BODY OF THE DECEASED!"

In another ironic hint of comedic timing, a small breeze blew away what little dust remained from the disintegrated Doctor.

"WE JUST WASTED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS _AND_ THE BODY OF OUR DEAD FRIEND JUST BECAUSE YOU GOT BORED! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A VIOLENT, SELFISH, IMMATURE, OUT-OF-CONTROL MAD MAN!"

Warden pressed his glaring eyes against Jared's face. "Oh, I'm _mad_, all right! Mad at _you_ for spouting such blasphemy!"

"IT WAS YOUR CARELESSNESS THAT CAUSED YOU TO SCREW UP YOUR OWN MAGIC SPELL! YOU CAN'T BLAME ME FOR _THAT _ONE!"

The Warden stuck his pointer finger up in the air, ready to fire back at his argument. "Well, I...I, uh..." Alas, his finger quickly recoiled. The Warden searched desperately in his mind for some way to successfully counter-argue Jared's furious accusations, but looking around at his environment, the empty cauldron, the barrel of radioactive waste, and even Jared's new mutations, he couldn't deny that the evidence was overwhelmingly against him.

After a moment of struggling, the Warden snapped his fingers, and a snarky smirk grew across his face. "Doesn't matter! I didn't need that old doctor anyways! I can just hire a NEW doctor!" The Warden pointed his finger against Jared's nose. "A-HA! Take _that_, Smart Ass!"

Unfortunately for him, Jared was still fully loaded. "We CAN'T! You just wasted a ton of money for the funeral preparations, which means we're now gonna have to cut costs to make up for the lost revenue, which includes NOT hiring anymore new employees!"

The Warden now had both hands on his hips. "We can always make up for it selling more dismembered limbs!"

"We cut all ties with that market months ago, on _your_ orders!"

Warden's heart sank. He tried to maintain what little vigor remained in his voice, but at this point, even he knew that his efforts were futile. "Well, there's always, umm...w-we can always just, uhh...I..."

Jared smiled. Winning so successfully against his boss in a heated argument was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he wasn't going to waste a single second of this moment of glory. Jared walked closer and closer toward the Warden as he made his final verbal strike. The frightened Warden backed farther and farther away until Jared had his back against the wall. "YA SEE?! YA CAN'T PIN THIS MESS ON ME FOR ONCE! YOU'VE GOT NOBODY TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF! ALL OF THIS AND PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING THAT EVER GOES WRONG IN SUPERJAIL IS BECAUSE...OF..._**YOU!"**_

Jared stuck his left pointer finger toward the Warden's face, finally allowing himself a few moments to catch his breath while he continued glaring and smiling with triumph. At first, the Warden's bit his lower lip, and his eyes welled up with more tears, but before he could show anymore emotional weakness, Warden promptly shook his head to try to shake off his sadness. He then gritted his teeth in anger, growling and shaking his right fist into the air, but just when it looked like he was going to strike Jared down...

POOF! The Warden shapeshifted into a purple rocket, equipped with an extremely short fuse that burned out the entire string in the span of two seconds. With a deafening boom, the Warden shot himself straight up through the ceiling, sending chunks of rubble and debris raining around Jared. One piece of drywall as heavy and large as a medicine ball landed flat on top of Jared's cranium, knocking the accountant out cold with a puddle of blood forming around his head and neck.

The Warden rocket continued blasting upward, leaving more holes in the floor and ceilings of the lab, followed by the back courtyard (not to be mistaken for the area where the funeral would've been held), the cafeteria, the laundry room, and finally, to his own bedroom, at the top of the tower that was shaped like the Warden's head and top hat. The second he was inside, he burst into a fiery mushroom cloud, sending five feet of smoke blowing the double doors and windows wide open, and causing the top hat of the roof to leap into the air for a moment, and land right back in its place. The eyeball-shaped windows also appeared be glowing red from a distance, making the Warden-shaped building look as angry as the genuine article. As the raging inferno flew across the room, it also set engulfed every single object in its path in flames. His bed, nightstand, carpet, paintings, even his sentient alarm clock caught fire, the clock screaming and ringing its bells in pain until the fire quickly reduced him to ash.

However, it seemed that the explosion didn't get all of the Warden's anger out of his system. As soon as the mushroom cloud had dissipated, he immediately transformed into a raging purple gorilla, his jaws frothing with fury. Despite his belongings still aflame, he destroyed them even farther by tearing them apart with his gnarled teeth and beefy arms and legs, reducing what little was left of his furniture and decor into scattered fragments of torn fabric, wood chips, feathers from his pillow and mattress, and shreds of canvas and photographs with gaping claw marks. After the Warden proceeded to throw his sofa against the wall, the impact of the blow caused a large crack to grow upward, and form a jagged circle on the ceiling that was the size of a yoga mat. The circular chunk of ceiling collapsed, and landed on top of the ape Warden with a CRASH! The single piece of the ceiling had now been reduced to a scattered array of boulders and rubble. The Warden was standing in the center of it, his body wobbling back and forth in his daze, and his pupils continuously growing and shrinking in his eyeballs. Once he'd regained his balance, the Warden changed back into his human form, groaning and holding his head up in pain.

That did it. The Warden's temper had finally cooled down, and his outfit now looked as ragged and tired as the rest of him. His stylish tuxedo had been reduced to a purple vest with the bottom of half of his yellow blouse ripped clean off the torso, leaving only the sleeves and the portions that covered his chest. The top half of his top hat had fried, leaving nothing but a charred bottom half, and the rim that rested around his forehead. His fuchsia bow tie and cummerbund had come apart, and were how hanging off his neck and torso as loose lines of fabric. The legs of his pants had been scorched, and now looked more like a pair of shorts that went down to his kneecaps. All that remained of his grey gloves were a pair of cuffs on his wrists, and the vamps and toe boxes of his shoes had completely curled backward, resembling a pair of leather snail shells resting on his feet.

Once he'd fully regained his bearings, the Warden covered his mouth in shock when he saw his bedroom completely demolished and still smoldering in fire. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen worse damage done to Superjail before; it was a mere dent compared to the other acts of violence he'd caused. However, what made this particular scene so horrifying was realizing who the culprit was. In the past, Warden usually had some sort of distraction or scapegoat that allowed him to shirk responsibility for his own actions. He'd blamed smokers for setting the prison on fire, and all the inmates and employees were so desperate for their cigarettes back, none of them told him that he and Ash were the ones who burned Superjail to the ground. The Warden willingly disregarded the deaths of the handicapped inmates once hundreds more had become cripples themselves, much to Warden's delight. He'd allowed the prisoners wearing wolf suits to turn into werewolves and maul each other, but never once perceived it as a tragedy since their innards made for such delectable "mystery meat." And, probably the most shocking of all, not a single soul in Superjail held the Warden accountable when his literal inner demon aided in the death of an innocent four-year-old cancer patient. It was unfathomable how the Warden was able to get away with such violence and cruelty, but, no matter how heinous his actions were, he and the rest of Superjail were able to overlook his behavior and move on, almost as if those travesties never happened.

Here, the circumstances were entirely different. The Warden had no way of shaking the blame off of him. There wasn't a single inmate within sight of his room, as they were all still attending a funeral that they weren't aware had been jeopardized. Jailbot was keeping watch over said inmates, so he couldn't have done it. Jared was still unconscious in the Doctor's old lab, and Alice was still helping Jailbot watch over the prisoners. There weren't any cigarettes, flaming logs in his fireplace, or any other flammable objects he could blame for it, only the fire that was smoldering his living space. And, probably the most damning fact of all, the Warden remembered his fit of rage perfectly. He couldn't say he didn't know he'd set his bedroom on fire, or that he'd forgotten his violent episode so quickly. He knew it all too well. Now, thanks to his sociopathic behavior, he'd lost the Doctor, hundreds of thousands of dollars (and probably much more with the sudden need of repairs), his living quarters, and all the belongings within. Yet, despite losing all of this, it seemed that, for the very first time in his life, the Warden realized he'd lost something far more critical to his well being than even his most prized possessions and playthings: he'd lost his mind.

After staring at the ruins for a few seconds more, the Warden fell to his knees, his eyes and jaws still gaping at the destruction. He then gazed down at his trembling, bare hands, which were dirtied with debris and scratched from heavy use of his fists. Just before he could throw himself on the floor and cry, Alice entered the room through what was left of the main door.

"Hey, Warden. We gonna do the damn funeral or-whoa!" Alice's eyes widened when she saw the mess in front of her. "What the F happened in here?"

Warden sniffed back a tear. "I happened in here, Alice. I...had another temper tantrum."

Alice blew her lips in disinterest. "What else is new? Anyways, are we gonna do the stupid funeral or what?"

"What else is new?" That was Alice's more polite version of what she really wanted to say: "No shit, moron. You do this kind of crap all the time." Alice sure as hell knew the hard truth that the Warden had just now come to grasp, and she wasn't sugarcoating it in the least, but at the moment, she was more focused on getting her boring duties over with than the distraught Warden kneeling on the floor in front of her with his back turned. However, her comment was the straw the broke the Warden's proverbial back. He sprang to his feet, grabbed a handful of his hair on the left and right sides of his head, and ripped them clean off, wailing to the heavens, _"WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!"_

Unable to stand it a moment longer, the Warden shoved Alice out of his path as he raced down the grey hallway, his left arm covering his tear-soaked glasses.

Alice, now sitting on the floor, raised an eyebrow. "Where the crap do I begin?"


	2. The Premature Celebration

Some time later, all the prisoners were returned to their cells, back to the what seemed like infinite rows of concrete rooms, each locked with a gate of thick, vertically-aligned, steel bars. For a Superjail inmate, their room was the one place in this Hellhole that felt the least like Hell, which was about as comparable as, say, having to choose between either sleeping on a plank of wood, or a rectangular plate of spikes. Neither option would make for a very pleasant experience, so it was a more of a matter of choosing how much pain you were willing to endure. In today's case, sitting in their cold, boring cells in their orange jumpsuits seemed far less painful than sitting outside in black suits under the burning sun for no reason other than the Warden got bored and sabotaged his own funeral plans. If he was going to make them go through all that trouble, there should have at least been a purpose for all of it to make the efforts worthwhile. Even a bite of cake at the reception would've been more rewarding than what they had now, which was simply more foul tempers, and even a few sunburns.

Inside one cell, toward the East Wing, an irritated Jean Baptiste Le Ghei was standing toward the left wall, unbuttoning his suit jacket, and continuing to his white blouse as he grunted his complaint. "Well, that was a whole two hours of my life wasted."

His better half, however, was in no rush to take off his funeral attire. An ever-so-flamboyant Paul Guaye was posing in front of a door mirror nailed onto the right wall. He swayed his hips and buttocks with his hands, getting a closer look at them from different angles. "Well, at least they got to let me keep the dress."

Paul turned back to his cellmate. "Hey, be honest: does this skirt make my ass look big?"

The minute those words were uttered from his husband's lips, a sensual smile grew across Jean's face, and he allowed his white blouse to flop right on the floor so that, when he turned around, he'd reveal his tattooed pecs and six-pack abs. "Honestly, I've always liked a dude with a hard ass."

WHAM! Jean suddenly found himself with a bright-red hand print across his right cheek. "Is that really all I am to you these last few days?!" Paul scowled. "Your human sex toy?!"

Jean's smile dropped to a frown of desperation. "Of course not, babe! I-I was just sayin' you have a good ass, you know, not the fat, gross kind, like a lot of these other freaks of nature have."

Jean pointed his right thumb over his shoulder, showing Paul a butt-naked Fatty happily revealing his junk in front of a disgusted Jailbot, shaking his hips from side-to-side. Fortunately for Jailbot, he able to clothe that pervert in the blink of an eye, but if the poor AI had the function to vomit, he would've tossed his microchips by now.

Paul sighed, and his tone eased to one of that sounded more concerned than offended. "Look, I appreciate your sensitivity, but I miss the days when our relationship was about touching each other's hearts, not just each other's balls."

Jean's frown deepened. "Yeah, I'm sorry, hon. I just really need somethin' ta get my mind off of fryin' my ass off in that courtyard for two hours."

Paul let out a "humph," and puts his hands on his hips. "There are lots of other ways to let off steam besides masturbating, you know, and I don't wanna be treated like some human vibrator that you can just plug yourself into anytime you're in a bad mood."

All of a sudden, the couple's quarrel was interrupted by a high-pitched, heartbroken whimper. A small Labrador puppy was standing on his hind legs at the Guaye's cell door, whining and leaning his front paws against the bars, as though he were begging to come inside. He stared at the convicted felons with yellow, tear-filled eyes, his lower lip quivering and hanging off his mouth in an adorable pout. The doggie also wore a petite, purple top hat that matched his violet hide, and had a pink bow tie around his neck.

Paul's eyes and smile beamed, the right side of his face leaning against his clenched hands in adoration. He was perfectly aware that this was not really an innocent puppy, but the little critter looked far too cute and heartbreakingly sad for Paul to care right now. Unlike his husband, Jean wasn't the least bit fooled by this little facade on display in front of them, and he sure wasn't in any mood to do the person in disguise any favors after what he'd just put him through. Still, with a grunt and roll of his eyes, Jean allowed Paul to dabble in his sentimentality. For all it was worth, it was his most convenient means of relationship damage control at the moment.

Soon, the Warden was sitting on the Guaye's bottom bunk like a bench, his head hanging low while a pair of miniature waterfalls poured from underneath his glasses, slowly turning the prison cell into an inch-deep wading pool. Paul sat beside the Warden on his left, stroking his back in comfort, and hearing him out with a look of genuine compassion.

"A-And so," Warden sobbed, "th-that's when I-I finally realized...that I'm a total _WRECK!"_

Warden slammed both feet against the floor in agony, splashing a bit of salt water on Paul's chest and legs. Fortunately for the Warden, Paul wasn't the least bit fazed by this, and gave his boss a warm hug, allowing more tears to stream down his shoulder.

Jean was sitting on the toilet reading the newspaper when he noticed that the bottom of his orange boots were suddenly soaked. "Aw, Jesus, Warden!" He groaned. "I just had these duds polished!" Jean glanced at him with annoyance as he stood back up to flush.

After a moment, Warden let go of Paul, and took his glasses off so he could rub his eyes. "I-I dunno why I act so violent a-and crazy all the time! It's almost become this habit of mine. A-And, the worst part is..." The Warden sniffled. "I don't think I can get myself to stop."

The Warden wrapped his arms around his bent legs, hugging them close to his chest. "Given how much trouble I've caused already, I fear I might be past the point of no return." The thought made Warden stare off into space, his frown shrinking with fright.

Paul graciously handed him a lacy, pink handkerchief, and the Warden put his glasses back on, and lowered his legs so that he could take it from Paul's hand.

"There there, Warden." Paul responded with a pat on the back. "Everybody's got problems of their own, but the fact that you're noticing it now is a good step in the right direction."

Warden turned away from Paul to blow his nose, but he did it so hard, and with so much snot, he'd left a hole the size of a donut through the pink cloth, reducing the hanky to sopping wet doilies coated in green slime. He tossed the disgusting rag over his shoulder, and turned back to his friend.

Jean stood by Paul's left with folded arms and muttered, "Sure as Hell took him long enough."

Without even needing to turn his head around, Paul violently elbowed Jean in the crotch, causing him to double-over on the floor. Ignoring his squeals of pain, Paul put his right hand on the Warden's left shoulder, frowning with respect to the sensitivity of the topic at hand. "Listen, Warden, I know this is gonna be a lot more personal than you're probably comfortable with, but if you want me to help you, I gotta ask...has anything..._really_ bad ever happened to you? Something so horrible and traumatizing that it made you feel scarred for life?"

The Warden raised an eyebrow. "What does the Heck _that_ have to do with anything?"

"Because a lot of people develop problems like addiction or violent tendencies as a way to cope with a really intense situation that's happened in their lives."

The Warden's eyes widened again. "Really? I thought they were just born that way."

There was so much blatant ignorance in that one statement that, on any other day, Paul would've called likely him out on it, if his tough-as-nails spouse hadn't done it first. This time, Paul let it slide, and instead, held the Warden's left hand, hoping to console him a bit. "Go ahead, Warden. Let it out."

The Warden put his right hand hand behind his head, and looked down at the floor, a bit reluctant a first, but he slowly regained the nerve to look at Paul back in the eyes. "Well...there were a few incidents with...my father..."

Jean was just getting standing back up, recovering from being slammed so hard in the wienie, but when he heard the Warden mention his father, he whispered a gasp to himself, and his eyes popped open. Jean wasn't the kind of guy that would open to people easily. Just because he was a homosexual didn't mean that he wanted to share his most personal thoughts and feelings with everybody he befriended, unlike the social butterfly he was proud to call a husband. Especially in such a brutal, and often deadly, environment as jail, it was critical for Jean to keep his guard up, to make it clear to all who knew him that he was not a forced to be reckoned with, and that he'll do whatever it takes to make sure he and his sweetheart eventually lived happily ever after together on the outside.

Once in a blue moon, there was a time when Jean needed to open up to someone for reasons other than survival or trying to please Paul. He may be a ruthless prisoner who'd, literally, kill for freedom, but there was still a smidgen of kindness and selflessness within his soul when a situation called for it. There was a distinct difference between being hardcore and being evil. One involved using strength to protect himself and his loved ones, while the other would show off strength for his own benefit regardless of how it affected his loved ones. If there was enough room in Jean's heart for innocent little "Cancer," then surely he could make room for a victim of an abusive parental figure, even if he considered that victim to be one of his greatest enemies.

"Your father? A-As in your old man?" Jean promptly took his seat beside the Warden on the opposite end of the bunk. "What did he do to ya?"

The Warden glanced back at Paul, disturbed that Jean was suddenly so interested in discussing a topic that was touchy, to say the least. However, Paul returned it with an expression of reassurance, as if he had come to expect this sort of reaction out of Jean by this point in their relationship. "Just let him hear ya out, Warden."

Warden turned back to Jean, squeezing his hands together with nervousness. "Ok. For starters, there was the time when..."

About ten minutes later, the Guayes were hugging each other close, their bodies trembling and their lips agape with terror. Their eyeballs had grown three inches tall, tears brimming on the edge of their eyelids. The Warden was standing before them, pantomiming his tragic tale. "And after I'd offered him some juice from my sippie cup, the fat, smelly one picked me up with his sweaty hands, and shouted at my Dad from across his cell, 'Thanksth for the new toy, sthir!'" To imitate that gruesome character, Warden morphed his body to resemble a morbidly obese, middle-aged male with an overbearing beer gut hanging over the waistline of his purple prison jumpsuit. The sideburns circling his bald head were ragged and tangled, and his teeth had eroded into seven bony stubs dangling from his gums. After establishing that abhorrent image, Warden switched back to his original form. "A-And then, Papa looked at him in the eye, _smiled_ at him, and said..." The Warden morphed into his father's signature image, wearing a purple waistcoat and top hat instead of black. "'Just make sure you bring him back in the morning.'"

"STOP!" Paul covered the Warden's mouth with his left hand, causing the Warden to snap out of character, and abruptly transform back to himself. Now, it was Paul's turn to bawl out the waterworks. "YOU DON'T HAVE TO RELIVE ANOTHER HORROR STORY A MINUTE LONGER! YOU POOR THING!"

Both Guayes wrapped their arms around the Warden, Paul on the left, Jean on the right, spouting out tears like a pair of sprinkler heads, and snuggling against the sides of his torso. The Warden's frown had neutralized into an inch-long, straight line on his face. He appreciated well-deserved sympathy as much as the next victim of child abuse, but seeing the Guayes fall apart this much over him seemed a bit excessive, even for, well, gays.

The couple took turns crying out more words of pity for their Warden.  
Paul. "THAT SICK BASTARD! WHAT HE MADE YOU DO TO THAT POOR LITTLE PUPPY!"  
Jean. "A-AND HOW HE MADE YOU CHOP THOSE GUYS' HEADS OFF WHEN YOU WERE FIVE!"  
Paul. "AND THOSE POOR LITTLE PONIES!"  
Jean. "A-AND THE PART ABOUT BEING NAKED AND COVERED IN ICE CREAM IN PUBLIC!"

With a sheepish smile and chuckle, the Warden gently pried himself out of the Guaye's arms. "Uh, h-heh, hey, fellas, I appreciate the kind words and all, but I don't feel like I really accomplished anything from talking so much about my father." He gave an especially perplexed glance at the Guaye on his right. "I'm surprised you of all people would be so interested in learning about my past, Jean." This followed with a grimace. "It's actually kind of creepy."

Jean sighed. "I'm sorry, Warden. It's just that my Dad was a complete asshole too, so I always feel sorry for a guy who's had to put up with that kind of crap."

"Yikes. What did _your_ old man do?"

At that instant, Jean's entire face clenched with anger. "Enough to make me wish I'd killed him _years_ ago..."

A white thought bubble spouted over Jean's head. Inside was a picturesque visualization of two small boys sitting together on the top of a grassy hill, overlooking the gorgeous view of a vast, green field, and the indigo mountains that stood farther off in the distance. The sky was bright teal, without a single cloud in sight. The children gazing at this lovely scenery were Caucasian boys, both about ten years old, laying their bare feet against the soft ground. One child was a freckled ginger who wore a yellow t-shirt, and red overalls. The other had black hair, and was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with blue jean overalls.

The brunette was tying the final knot in his handmade tiara of light-blue Forget-Me-Nots, and with an affectionate smile, he placed it on top of the ginger's curly q's. His friend giggled and blushed, and returned the thoughtful gift with puckered lips leaning towards him. Just as the two were ready to smooch, two towering legs, dressed in jean overalls and brown ranch boots, stepped behind them, and a furious growl roared from above. "WHAT THE SAM HILL IS THIS PERVERSION GOIN' ON HERE?!"

The boys looked up to see an enraged elder snarling down at them. He was middle-aged, his bald head and blonde sideburns covered with a straw hat, and he wore a white undershirt with his overalls. A pair of rectangular, black-rimmed glasses rested in front of his glaring blood-shot eyes, and his mouth was full of yellow teeth with a few golden ones squeezed between the plaque-coated stubs of eroded enamel.

The hillbilly geezer snatched the brunette's left arm with his right hand, and began to drag him by his feet, despite the boy's efforts to struggle out of his grasp, and return to his disheartened crush. "C'MON, JEAN! NO SON OF MINE IS GONNA TURN INTO A SISSY LITTLE PANSY ON MY WATCH!"

Before he knew it, young Jean was dressed in a white tank top with beige camouflage pants. An adult hand slammed an oversized green helmet against his little head, and another pair of hands tied a wooden crucifix pendant around his neck. Jean stood in a row with over a dozen other Caucasian boys his age in a field of trimmed grass. Standing as their commanding officer was a blonde reverend in his late forties with morbidly muscular arms that had torn the sleeves of his black clergy cloak clean off. With an ear-piercing blow from his coach whistle, the reverend had the boys dropping and giving him fifty pushups.

About two hundred feet from the left of the field was a large wooden sign that read in bold white letters "ST. BUTCH'S CHRISTIAN MILITARY REFORM SCHOOL." A janitor was standing on the top tier of an outrageously tall ladder, unfurling a new cloth banner that had been hooked to the bottom of the sign. "WHITES ONLY!"

The immense rage finally burst Jean's thought bubble. Every single vein in his face was rising against his skin in fury, drips of sweat streaming down to his neck. "That damn bastard always said that I'd go to Hell just for existing, BUT IF IT'S HELL HE WANTS FROM ME, I'M READY TO GIVE IT TO HIM!"

Fortunately for Jean, and the Warden, Paul was there to give him a massage, gently circling his fingers around Jean's shoulders while his thumbs worked around his upper back. "Jean, baby. Relax, honey. That bastard's not here ta push ya around anymore. C'mon, deep breaths..."

Jean listened to his lover's advice, and after two, slow inhales and exhales, his face softened. "Thanks, hon."

The Warden had remained surprisingly tentative during Jean's fiery episode, still listening to the Guayes with a sense of childlike curiosity in his eyes.

"The point is, Warden," Jean continued, in a more casual tone, "that you can't let your Dad push _you_ around, either. Ya gotta stand up to him!" Jean's energetic sneer grew across his face, and he threw a few punches and kicks in the air for dramatic emphasis in his motivational speech. "Kick him to the curb! Tell him off! Let him know that you're not gonna put up with his bull crap anymore!"

"Uh, yeah, about that? My Papa's been dead since I was, like, ten."

Jean's eyebrows raised further with optimism. "Well then, that makes it even better! 'Cause now, he can't yell back at you or hurt you like he could when he was alive."

The Warden waved his hands in front of his face. "Now waiy-wha-what-wait a second! How the heck am I supposed to stand up to my dead father?!" He then made a sharp turn away from the Guayes with his arms folded across his chest. "I'm not getting involved with anymore ghosts, if _that's_ what you're thinking!"

"Nah nah nah nah," Jean answered, still smiling. "I'm talkin' about goin' to your father's grave, and telling him off like you would've done if he were still livin'. It's like your own way of officially telling him _and_ yourself that you don't want anything to do with him ever again. You can forget about all those God-awful things he did to ya 'cause you're better than that! You're better off without him."

The Warden glared and smiled, his newfound courage intensifying by the second. "Yeah..."

Jean fisted his right hand. "You're _stronger_ without him!"

"Yeah!"

Jean pointed one finger against his right temple. "You're _smarter_ without him!"

"YEAH-I am?" Warden switched back to confusion just as he was ready to explode with excitement.

Jean wrapped his left arm around the Warden's shoulder. "Whaddaya say, Warden? You, me, and Paul, we go down to your old man's tombstone together, and help you give him the most obscene, most damning breakup speech of his afterlife!"

The Warden's face lit up with giddiness. "Oh, goodie! This'll be the perfect time to test one of the Doctor's last inventions he made for me!"

In the span of three minutes, he lead the Guayes into the Doctor's lab, Jared having left a while back. The Warden then picked up what looked like a generic, gray television remote, but with a press of a button, a burst of green light shot out from its pointer, and formed into a life-sized holographic replica of the Warden, complete with his trademark smile and friendly demeanor. The only difference from the genuine article besides its light-based structure was that its image was in shades of green instead of purple.

"This handsome hologram will serve as my temporary replacement Warden so that Superjail doesn't shut down while I'm gone." The Warden gave his duplicate a courteous handshake, though the Warden's solid hand went right through that of his hologram.

Immediately afterwards, he returned to the Guayes. "All right, now that that's taken care of..."

Then cried out in a sing-song voice. "JAAAAILBOOOOT!"

The Warden's mechanical buddy smashed through a wall at the bottom level of the lab, and approached his master with his 8-bit smile. In turn, the Warden surprised the Guayes with a suspiciously sly smirk on his face. "Be a pal, and keep these two under strict surveillance during our trip, will you?"

At that instant, the Guayes found themselves encased in an enormous, clear, plastic bubble, akin to that of a human-sized hamster ball, that remained attached to the palm of one of Jailbot's metal claws.

"HEY!" The two protested in unison, their voices somewhat muffled.

"Nothing personal, guys. Just makin' sure you don't try to escape during our little field trip to civilian life."

Jailbot activated the helicopter blades from inside his head, and morphed into his armchair form, allowing the Warden to kick back with his hands rested behind his head. The plastic bubble trapping the homosexual felons dangled from the robot arm, sticking out from the bottom of the seat. The gang then hovered through the hole in the wall Jailbot had just created, and ascended toward the yellow clouds in the baby-blue sky above Superjail.

Jean let out a frustrated sigh and hung his head, but Paul lifted his chin up, and faced him with a benevolent grin. "Hey...I guess you're not just a mindless sex addict after all." To officially seal this heartfelt apology, the Guayes finished it off with another tender embrace.

The Holographic Warden made several glances at his surroundings, and came to a very quick conclusion. "Bo-ring!" In a digital puff of green morse code, the Warden replica shapeshifted into an ostrich version of himself, and raced out the hole in the wall toward the Superjail courtyard.

No sooner had everyone departed the Doctor's laboratory when the sound of a catchy techno rhythm permeated the entire complex. The Warbuxx Twins appeared in a flash of green light, standing next to the now-empty cauldron and radiation barrel.

The left brother picked up the Warden's Satanic recipe book from the floor, and scanned through the parchment with his right pointer finger. "Resurrection, spiritual reunion, sexualization of females." He then closed the book with both hands, his pupils rolling underneath his unibrow. "How boring and infantile."

"Agreed." The right twin reached into his left pocket, and pulled out what would appear to the human eyes as a wad of used, pink chewing gum. However, when he stretched it out, it formed into a wide-open ring, similar to how one would stretch open a trash bag before use, and it remained sitting in midair, at the about the same height as the light-blue stripes on the Twins' dark-blue tunics. The young alien reached his entire right arm through the gummy ring, searching through it as though it were bag of some sort. To anyone observing from the outside, the Twin's arm was completely invisible, despite there being a visible, tangible space inside the ring, emitting a royal-blue light. The Twins were attempting to retrieve an item from a portable storage portal.

"Ah! Here it is." The Warbuxx boy reached his hand out of the gum portal, and revealed a book of their own culture. The cover was coated in a pelt of light-purple fish scales, with pages of light-blue cellophane and its text printed in gold. The title was made of letters of light-blue chrome smoldered against the cover. To an Earthling, it read as a half moon, an upside-down V , a double dagger, a permille , a circumflex O, and an umlaut E, which, as the Warbuxx on the right stated, translated to, "'The Galactios Book of Celestial Enchantments."

The left Twin stood back beside his brother. "Let us bring life to this dead party."

His fellow multitude flipped to the fifth page of the book with his left hand, holding the cover with his right, and recited a brief incantation in what sounded like backwards English language, the kind that Ozzal had once used to communicate with Hunter._"Goo-way-eff-ig-gnat-hit-tee-a-bolg!"_

The young Warbuxx reached out his right hand, and ZAP! A beam of bright-orange light burst from his fingertips, and struck the radiation barrel. In a matter of seconds, three, green, two-foot-long eyestalks sprouted from the top of the barrel's rim, its baseball-sized eyes wiggling and blinking as it observed its environment. Six rings of jagged teeth appeared inside the cylindrical base, stacked on top of each other in layers. The barrel's mouth now served as this creature's mouth, stretching the rest of the drum as it practiced smiling and frowning. Finally, a set of twenty, salmon-pink, squid tentacles grew from the bottom of the barrel, giving the inanimate object newfound mobility.

The monstrosity wrapped its creators with one of its tentacles, leaned his cylinder head forward, and placed the Twins on top of it, allowing the Twins to ride on it like a saddle.

The right Warbuxx smiled at his counterpart. "Let us obtain the fun at the fullest of swings."

With that, the Twins sallied forth, their pet slithering on all twenty limbs. The boys' mischievous laughter echoed across the chambers of the laboratory. _"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."_

Upon arriving at their destination, Jailbot, Jean, Paul, and the Warden were greeted with a barrage of dark-gray storm clouds, from which Jailbot flew right though without a hitch. Upon closer inspection, he could see that the whole sky was coated puffs of gray, blocking even the slightest inch of blue sky or sunshine from gracing this gloomy weather with its presence. Much to the chagrin of Jailbot's passengers, the dreariness of the scene several hundred feet below them seemed to call for such an intensely overcast sky.

Jean, Paul, Jailbot, and the Warden gazed down at what looked like an abandoned, American, Western town, sitting isolated in the middle of a vast, empty dessert. It was a small community, consisting of two rows of six buildings, divided by a fifty-foot gap of sandy road. They were mostly shops, stables, metalsmiths, a saloon, and an inn or two, all dilapidated and decrepit from decades of decay, save the barely visible signs that remained attached to various structures, such as the faded word "SALOON" that had been painted on the restaurant's towering front wall in black, or how another sign labeled "BLA_K SM_TH" maintained its readability despite its missing "C" and "I."

However, the feature that seemed the most visually compelling to the gang was its prison, a thirty-acre complex five miles to the left of the civilization where it obtained its prisoners. Its rectangular boarders were defined by a three-hundred-foot-tall concrete wall, the entire top covered with ten-foot-tall spirals of barbed wire. There was a five-hundred-foot-tall watch tower on each corner, with funnel-shaped balconies, and a four-foot metal pole that kept a pair of megaphones erect at the top, most likely to make sure that any siren or voice that it channeled through them would pierce the ears of every single soul within the prison limits. The jail itself consisted of four stone penitentiaries, one for every directional wing: North, South, East and West. They each stood five stories high and a full mile long, dotted with rows of rectangular barred windows. The main office stood toward the far-left corner of the field, a wooden two-story building just sixty feet to the left of the Northern Penitentiary. The flag pole that sat under the top-middle window had snapped in two, probably from the weight of its owner's massive body during the moment of his untimely, yet astonishingly calculated, demise. A much taller flag pole sat mounted at the very center of the facility, its flag missing for quite some time. There four, long rows of four-mile-long sheds lined up against each other between the North and East Penitentiaries, most likely used for indoor labor, such as building mechanical parts or serving their meager meals. The terrain of open space served as work sites for the prisoners to either participate in more excruciating work, such as breaking rocks with pickaxes, or face their brutal executions, like the hangman's nooses or guillotines scattered around the area, many of which still had the skeletons of their victims attached to them!

The Warden's old home and workplace may have worn out through the years, but he could visualize the horrific memories he experienced there as if the town and prison were still in their prime. He recognized the wooden kennels where the guard dogs were kept, with dozens of canine corpses strewn across the gravel, including quite a few of puppies, which served as a brutal reminder of the one the Warden was forced to slice in half as a child. The scene played in front of the Warden's eyes miles below him, at the very same spot where this tragedy occurred, as if a holographic film had been projected from his subconscious so that he could witness his memories in reality. The Warden felt the same psychological sensation when they passed over the Eastern Penitentiary, where he was kidnapped by a sex-hungry predator as punishment for trying to befriend him. He could see a pair of tiny toddler arms reaching through the bars of one of the windows, and hear a voice bawling out desperate pleas for his Papa.

The Warden winced. Every one of these flashbacks was enough to make his stomach churn with post-traumatic stress. Sure, he had contemplated these memories many times in Superjail, but Superjail was his sanctuary, his safe haven where he could distract himself from the agony of his past with all the wonders and pleasurable schemes he could conjure for himself in the present, and very seldom be held accountable for all the bloodshed in the process. Now, to be miles away from his rainbow-colored refuge, at the same location where all these terrible memories were fashioned? It was almost unbearable. The flashback that was undoubtedly the most difficult to stomach was the time his father had spanked him at an execution station for refusing to hang five prisoners at once. As soon as the gang flew over said station, the Warden leaned forward over Jailbot's left side, and spewed a pint of dark-green vomit.

He then curled up back in his seat into a fetal position, more tears running down his face. "I can't do this! It was a mistake to come here! I WANNA GO HOME!"

Jean stood up and gave the Warden a confident glare. "You can do it, Warden! Once you tell your Dad off, you won't ever have to come back to his God-forsaken shithole again!"

Warden dried his eyes, attempting regain his courage. "You're right. I gotta show my Dad and myself that I'm better off without him."

At last, Jailbot and his friends were soaring above the graveyard, an acre-long patch of dirt with four rows of six vintage tombstones and plaster crosses standing erect in the dusty turf. The Warden could easily identify which grave was his father's. It stood ten feet north of the other tombstones, giving it a sense of social as well as visual hierarchy over the other residents who were buried here. It was also the most extravagant, and probably most frightening, of all the memorials in place. The symbol of the Warden's father's life was a six-foot-tall, stone replica of the Spanish statue "El Angel Cadio," or "The Fallen Angel," which, in Christianity, was the spiritual embodiment of one surrendering their soul to the wickedness of Satan himself. A massive wreath sat on the ground leaning against the stand of the statue, its leaves and roses black and extremely withered.

Jailbot reattached the plastic orb containing the Guayes to another robotic claw protruding from his left, allowing him to safely land his chair seat on the ground. Poor Warden wrapped his entire body around Jailbot's head, shivering and chattering his teeth with fear. Jean then reached his right hand up against the roof of the sphere, which was as close as he could get to physically touching the Warden's hand. "You can do this."

The Warden swallowed hard, nodded his head, and stuck his right hand against Jean's so that they were perfectly aligned in front of each other. "Thanks, Jean."

Finally, the Warden stood up from his Jailbot seat. He took a deep breath, pulled his pants' waistline and cummerbund to the middle of his abdomen, and adjusted his top hat so that it leaned forward over his forehead. "Ok...here I go..."

There the Warden stood, on the burial grounds of his lifelong abuser, his eyebrows narrowed and his upper lip raised up in a juvenile expression of toughness. He raised his right pointer finger upward, and then sharply at dirt where his Dad was most likely buried under. The Warden started his speech of damnation by uttering the first words that ran through his jumbled mind, struggling to sound brave.

"You there...Papa! I..I-I've got...I've got something to say to you, you...bossy, cruel, meanie, you..."

Warden turned around to the Guayes, his expression dropping to that of sheer stage fright. "Line?"

Jean facepalmed and whispered, "Jailbot, take us behind the statue."

The robot positioned itself and his prisoners so that the Warden couldn't see them from where he stood. After a hacking cough and a clearing of his throat, Jean cupped his hands around his lips, and shouted out in a deeper tone of voice with a British accent. "I say, you pathetic little welp!"

The Warden let out a shriek of terror, and fell on his back, staring down at the ground again. "F-F-Father?!"

"You're utterly worthless without my guidance, you ungrateful brat! You're nothing but a childish, cowardly, pitiful excuse of a son, and that's all you'll ever be!"

Paul smiled and whispered. "Ooh! Someone nominate this guy for an Oscar..."

The Warden was buying these harsh words for a moment, his whole body flinching at the verbal slaughter he believed was targeting him. Suddenly, he stopped, and his tall, oval eyes switched from an intimidated stare that of a new sense of outrage boiling inside him. His face began to turn red, his teeth were gritting hard, and both his hands had turned into fists. The Warden let this emotional energy fester a couple of seconds longer before leaping back on his two feet.

"SHUT UP! JUST THE FUCK SHUT UP, DAMMIT!"

Jean and Paul leaned back a bit, at first shocked to suddenly hear the Warden so angry, but their smiles immediately returned. They finally had the Warden making his psychological stance against his father, or at least, they lead him into thinking that he was. As the Warden spoke, he lashed out as much of his body as he could to match the ferocity in his voice, frequently stretching his neck out, pointing his right hand at the ground, stomping his feet, or waving his fists up and down.

"I've had to put up with your bullshit for the first ten years of my existence, but I'm sure as Hell not gonna let your cruel words and physical assaults haunt me for the rest of my life anymore! I'm not giving you the satisfaction of making myself believe that I'm as pathetic and worthless as you think I am! I'm the Warden of Superjail now, a-and you can take your spanking and your yelling and all your other barbaric ways, and shove it back into Hell along with the rest of you, and everything you stand for! GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE!"

As the pièce de résistance of his maniacal monologue, the Warden dropped his trousers, and, without a hint of hesitation, doused the entire front of El Angel Cadio, the wreath, and the burial grounds in urine.

After the Warden had cleared his system (in more ways than one), he pulled his pants back up, and Jailbot floated out from behind the statue, clapping his robotic hands alongside the cheering Guayes.

Jean pumped his fists and whistled through his teeth. "WOOT! ALL RIGHT! WAY TA GO, WARDEN!"

Paul added. "THAT IS MY WARDEN! WHOO!"

The Warden's face flushed, and he bit his smiling lip. "D'awww, you guys!"

Warden then leaned his left hand against the plastic sphere while holding up his head with his right, taking deep, excited breaths, trying to prevent himself from fainting with astonishment. "Wow! Ha! Y-You were right, Jean! That felt _really_ good! I feel so much _better_ about myself now!"

Jailbot allowed Warden to lean against the sphere, similar to how one would lean on another's shoulders, and he lead him, Jean and Paul several feet away from the desecrated grave. "Like I said, honey," Paul added, "you're already on the right track when you officially wanna solve a problem."

Little did the gang suspect, another aura of darkness and dread began to percolate in the cemetery. It started with few flashes of thunder and lightening darting across the sky. After which, the tufts of gray clouds merged into the form of an ominous hurricane swirl, directly overhead of the Fallen Angel statue. As the thunder and lightening intensified to cacophonous roaring, the ground on which the Warden had soiled began to stir, and clumps of dirt merged upward into a small mound. Its growth staggered a bit as its digger struggling, but after a moment, the mound had broken open into the tunnel opening, and rising from beneath was a human hand! Its Caucasian flesh had miraculously remained unscathed despite all the years it spent underground, but the surefire sign of its supernaturality was that the entire arm was glowing a shade of neon green!

Warden, Jailbot, and the Guayes remained utterly oblivious to this metaphysical phenomenon occurring just twenty feet behind them. They were chatting amongst themselves in a group huddle, their backs turned from the bewitched grave site. As they conversed, a second hand burst out about ten inches apart from the other, and both clawed against the ground with a firm grip. The force from the arms pulling upward revealed a human head rising upward, it, too, emitting a bright-green light. The black silk of his top hat had been tinted into a dark emerald color, along with black and dark-gray cloth on his waistcoat and vest.

"So," Warden chirped. "What do I do next, Jean? I don't feel any less crazy than when we started."  
Jean chuckled. "Well, that's kinda hard to say at this point, but maybe if we-"  
"OH MY GOD!" Paul screeched, pointing ahead with a trembling right finger. Jean, Warden, and Jailbot spun around, and let out their own screams of horror at the terrifying sight before them.  
"WHAT THE FUCK IS _THAT?!"_ Jean shouted, clinging onto Paul like a scared child.  
As more of this being continued digging itself out, a daunting notion sent the Warden reeling, his face turning completely pale. "N-No! It-it _can't_ be...!"

In one more blinding lightening strike, the mysterious phantasm had finished climbing out of its crypt, revealing itself to be the spirit of the Warden's father, looking as callous and furious as he had ever been in life. Like all the ghosts the Warden had encountered, all the pigmentation in his father's hair, skin, and clothes had been replaced with various shades of light and dark green. His signature image, however, had remained completely in tact, not a single sign of decomposition to be seen, as rotting his corpse would've surely been by now. As if that wasn't frightening enough for the poor Warden, that not even death seemed to scathe his father's strength and emotional vigor in the very least, what horrified him even more was the look on his face, that all-too-familiar, ferocious scowl in his glaring eyes and clenching jaws. It was the kind of face that made it perfectly clear that he wasn't going to show the slightest bit of mercy for those who were about to endure his unholy wrath.

For the Warden, that face and the time for it, had all come too soon.


	3. Growing Pains

**Chapter 3: Growing Pains**

As the specter approached the group of frightened spectators, the Warden fell back again, sitting on the ground with his arms and legs bent, as though he were ready to scramble and flee at any given moment. The Guayes embraced each other close, their bodies trembling and their eyes gazing up in horror. Even Jailbot, who was no stranger to facing off ghosts, found himself shaking and and dripping digital sweat down his 8-bit face.

In his efforts to further intimidate his son, the Warden's father levitated four feet in the air, towering over him like an angry god ready to strike him down. Warden himself had become a deer in the headlights, his whole body frozen with his eyes and jaws still gaping.

"HOW _DARE_ YOU!" The Warden's father lashed his head and neck out to match the intensity of his anger. His arms curved outward with his hands strained into fists.

Poor Warden was so overwhelmed with alarm, he found himself only able to stammer panicky gibberish as his first response to his father's outrage.

After a second or two, the Warden was cut off before he could whimper anymore nonsense. "WHERE DO YOU GET THE GALL TO DESECRATE THE GRAVE OF YOUR OWN _FATHER?!"_

Now the Warden's father was arching downward, pressing his sneering face against that of his son. The moment they had reached direct physical contact was the Warden's official breaking point. What little courage he had left in him had instantly drained out. His mind abandoned all efforts to retaliate against his Father. Instead, in a frantic effort to save his skin as well as that of his comrades, he very aggressively switched to a new defense mechanism.

The Warden got up onto his knees, and clutched his hands together with a face that pleaded for mercy. "I'M SO SORRY, FATHER! I DIDN'T KNOW YOUR GHOST WAS ACTUALLY DOWN THERE! PLEASE, _PLEASE_ FORGIVE ME!"

"DON'T INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE!" His dad growled, clenching his face and fists even harder. "I HEARD EVERY WORD YOU SHOUTED SO PROUDLY UP HERE, AND I'VE NEVER HEARD SUCH OUTRAGEOUS SLANDER COMING FROM A COMPLETE IMBECILE LIKE _YOU_, WARDEN!"

Paul blinked, snapping out of his hypnotic state of fear. It seemed that the idea of a father needlessly berating his own son had instilled the nerve back into him. With a scornful glare, Paul let go of Jean, and put his left hand on his hip while the other pointed as far forward as the plastic sphere containing him would allow. "Hey, shut the fuck up you-wait?" There was another factor within that sentence that had both Guayes perplexed. "Your Dad calls you 'Warden,' too?" Paul queried.

Warden's father approached him, his face still scowling. "You'd do well to hold your tongue in_my_ presence! Negroes are better off seen, not heard!"

Paul let out such an immense gasp, his entire lower abdomen deflated, then re-inflated with rage as he formed his hands into fists as well. _"NEGRO?!_ OH THAT IS, _IT!"_

Paul's equally offended spouse cracked his knuckles. "LET US AT 'IM, JAILBOT!"

With a malicious sneer, Jailbot gladly deactivated the orb, the clear plastic curving backwards into a pole-like form to fit inside his metal right arm. Jean and Paul raced for the Warden's father, ready for an aggressive beat down with their bare hands. Alas, it seemed he had already prepared the ideal counterattack. With a sly smirk, the Warden's father made a dash for Paul's open mouth, his body stretching out to slide down his throat. The second the ghost was in his system, Paul stopped in his tracks, and his hair, flesh, organs, and clothes began to glow the same spectrum of green that the Warden's father emitted. He then redirected his face toward Jean, and, with a furious glare, he pinned his husband down, laying his head and face flat against the dirt while Paul sat on his scapula. Jean broke out of enough of Paul's grasp to lift his face out of the sand, but the rest of his head remained confined to the ground as his spouse swung numerous punches against the back of his head and neck. With each hit, Jean winced and groaned in pain, and after several punches, splatters of blood started to fly out of his mouth.

"OW! AH! AGH! OW! UGH! KN-KNOCK IT OFF, PAUL! AUNGH!"

The Warden wrapped both of his arms around the back of Paul's right arm before he could throw another punch, tugging it repeatedly as Paul struggled to jerk out of the Warden's grip. "Papa, stop! Leave them alone! They're my friends! Stop it!"

At that, Paul's cheeks bloated to the size of soccer balls, and the spirit of Warden's Father shot out of his mouth in a belch that sounded like a combination of a dry heave and a wet burp.

With the demon out of his body, Paul flopped flat on his chest, laying horizontally across Jean's back, making the two look like a human plus sign. The poor "Negro" covered his lower abdomen, moaning in a nauseated daze with drips of ectoplasm running down his chin. Sadly, Jean wasn't faring much better. He now had a pair of swollen, dark-purple shiners, an crooked nose with blood oozing through the nostrils, and a newly formed underbite with several teeth crooked or missing altogether.

The Warden covered his mouth with both hands. Ordinarily, he'd be furious at anyone who tried to his friends, but in his horrified state of mind, the last option he wanted to resort to was fighting back, lest his father further invoked his wrath upon any more of the Warden's loved ones.

Judging from the scowl on his face, it seemed his father was reading his mind. "That will be you and _all_ your little friends, too, if you so much as _think_ of further defying me! _UNDERSTAND?!_"

The blast of air from his father's scream blew the Warden backward about ten feet, only stopping after his upper back slammed against Jailbot's front. He, too, was fearful for his friends' lives, and cradled the Warden in his metal arms as he embraced his white shoulders. "Y-YES, FATHER! I-I WON'T EVER SAY OR DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER AGAIN! I PROMISE!"

Warden's Father nodded, and folded his arms across his chest. "And believe me, I'll find my own ways to make sure that you _keep_that promise."

Just then, his father let out a gasp of shock. As he gazed at Jailbot, he could visualize his son's Lego-esque toy shaped exactly like him floating where the genuine article stood.

"YOU!" Warden's father shouted. "You're that 'Little Flying Man' that my son fabricated! How on Earth is this abomination a living creature now?!"

Jailbot let out a virtual gasp, but the Warden leaped out of his friend's arms, and stood protectively in front of him, reaching his arms forward and shaking his hands from side-to-side. "Wait, Papa, please don't hurt him! He didn't have anything to do with this!"

The Warden's father rolled up his sleeves, giving Jailbot a rather disconcerting look. "Unless he'll be of use to me, he has no business further tarnishing MY prison with his very presence!"

Suddenly, the Warden's eyes popped. "_Be of use to me."_ That seemed like the key solution. Obviously, the Warden wasn't going anywhere with trying to appease his father by cowering in fear of him. He had defiled his father's grave, which, for him, was about as heinous as a human intentionally destroying a hornet's nest, and equally difficult to convince either victim not to annihilate their attacker. On top of that, Warden's dad already perceived his son as being a cowardly weakling. Repeatedly admitting it, either through actions or words, was simply reinstating what he had constantly told the Warden for the first ten years of his life, making him sound too much like a broken record for his father to want to heed his desperate pleas.

No. The true key to making someone appeal to their enemy was not to force a friendship between them, but to convince the unsuspecting individual that there was nothing to fear from admiring their alleged nemesis, heedless to any physical or emotional damage that could be inflicted toward either side from this association. In this case, there was a high probability that Jailbot would be harmed in both ways if he were to be affiliated with his master's father, but, as far as the Warden could tell, if Jailbot _didn't_appeal to his father's better nature, he would most _certainly_ be hurt one way or another.

A new strategy formed in the Warden's head, albeit a hasty one with no definite plan on how to properly execute it, but if it seemed like the most viable option for him and his colleagues, so be it. With a lump in his throat, the Warden forced a nervous smile across his face, and spoke with a nervous, yet effectively persuasive tone of voice, as if he were rookie salesman trying to win over his first customer. "Wait, Papa, wait! Th-this is my buddy, Jailbot! I know you didn't like him before, but he's really a marvel in modern-day incarceration! He's a sentient machine that's programmed to round up criminals in the most brutal ways possible, and still have the intellect and personality of a human being!"

Warden then opened up the floor to his metal buddy. "G-Go ahead, Jailbot, show him!"

Jailbot was a tad perturbed of being put in the spotlight like this, but at the moment, he was too focused on staying alive (or in his case, functioning) to care. That very instant, Jean and Paul started to regain their bearings, stirring and struggling to get back on their feet. They didn't get any farther than their hands and knees when Jailbot electrocuted them with his pair of taser claws, one for each Guaye. A surge of yellow light burst from their bodies while white bolts of electricity surged up and down from head to toe. After about a second of this, they plopped back on top of each other again, now looking like a dark-gray human cross that gave off streams of smoke. Jailbot then popped out a second left claw, this time one that shot a weighted fishing net on top of the prisoners, and lifted them up by the net's open ends, as if he'd, literally, caught his prey in the bag.

The Warden's father dropped his jaw in surprise, and leaned closer toward the charred, semi-conscious Guayes with newfound curiosity, rubbing his right pointer finger against the bottom of his chin. "Hmmm..."

His son zipped back toward his father's right side, wrapping one arm around his shoulders. "I know this is probably really new and strange to you, but things have really _improved_ since you passed away! Throughout the years, we as a society have developed so many efficient means of capturing, imprisoning, and executing hardened criminals! Why, I _invented_ many of those methods in my_own_ prison back home!"

Warden's father backed a few inches from his son, making him let go of his shoulder, and gave him a skeptic raised eyebrow. "So, you actually managed to make the warden your official job position, not just your name?"

"Indeed, I have! I'm the official founder and manager of a very special prison called..." Warden put his hands in the air, spreading his arms out wide, and a miniature rainbow formed over his head, along with an array of miniature fireworks. As the Warden finished his proud declaration, his words formed in large, bold, yellow letters above the top of his hat. "SUPERJAIL!"

Warden's father plugged his ears with his pointer fingers, and winced at noise and flashing colors gleaming from his son's vivd imagination. "STOP THAT FOOLISHNESS THIS INSTANT!"

The Warden's pose, fireworks, glowing rainbow, and shining letters all paused at once. After a second of being frozen, the words and imagery shrunk and zipped back into his body, as if he had his own rewind button that allowed him to set his most recent actions into reverse. His cheerful smile rewound into a frown of shame, and he held his top hat against his chest in repentance.

Warden's Father approached him even closer, repeatedly pointing his ectoplasmic hand against his son's chest. "I don't care how different this newfangled time period is; I _refuse_ to tolerate my son acting like some sort of rainbow-colored nincompoop! Do you hear me?! Not _ever _again!"

Warden nodded, filled with another wave of intimidation. "Y-Yes, sir! Won't happen again!"

As the Warden's father continued to condemn his cowering son, they failed to notice a sixth soul making their way towards town. About one hundred and fifty feet southwest of the graveyard came another glowing, green ghost: a Caucasian woman in her late 20s with long, raven hair, and wearing nothing but a plain, white, long-sleeved dress. Like the Warden's father, she, too, didn't bare a shred of resemblance to a rotting corpse, her spirit having maintained her healthy appearance from her time in life. What set her as far from him as possible was her gentile demeanor and fair beauty. She was five feet tall, and floated just four inches above the ground. She was naturally lean, looking healthy and fit without any help from a corset (especially considering the standards for the American Wild West.) She peered at her environment with hazel-green eyes, and fluttering, curly eyelashes. Her lips were the closest shade of light pink that her green color spectrum would allow, and were giving a rather timid frown. She appeared anxious, frequently turning her head left and right, as if she was looking for something, or perhaps, some_one_. However, she was doing it in such a way that, despite her daunting state of existence, she was much more likely to break or melt hearts than strike fear into them. All she was missing was a pair of wings, a halo, and to be tinted in shades of light-blue or gold instead of green.

The feminine phantasm had now reached the saloon, approximately fifty-five feet southwest from the cemetery, when she spotted the second ghost, and the mortal man standing before him. She covered her mouth with her right hand, and took a few "steps" back against a wooden wall, within a narrow alley between the saloon and a metalsmith's stable.

Despite how far she was, she could hear the conversation taking place in front of her (Warden's father certainly had the perfect voice for it.) He had turned to the left to look at the distant view of his former workplace. "I see you've completely abandoned MY prison!" He then spun back to his son. "Were MY methods not good enough for you, boy?! HAVE I TAUGHT YOU _NOTHING?!"_

Warden's eyes widened. "N-no! No, Father! You DID teach me a lot!"

The moment she first heard the young man call the ghost "Father," the woman covered her mouth again, this time with two fisted hands, and her eyes shot straight up. She continued listening with intense focus, her eyes and ears not sparing a single second on anything else.

Warden's enthusiastic, salesman-like demeanor returned, and he did his best to pantomime his gestures for dramatic emphasis without any shapeshifting or simultaneous visuals. "I-It's just that, w-well, my plans for improving your prison were so big, literally and metaphorically, that I had to move it to a new location, one that's big enough to slaughter hundreds more inmates in a single _day_ than any prison warden has accomplished in their entire _lifetime!"_

Rivers of tears were now streaming down the woman's face. As she slowly shook her head, she lowered her hands so she could mouth a silent, "No."

Warden's father, on other hand, seemed quite eager to hear such words coming out of his son. His right thumb rested against his chin, his eyelids lowered halfway, and, for the first time in ages, he was smiling at something other than the pain of his inmates or his child. "Hmm, that _does _sound promising. Perhaps you've truly made something of yourself after all."

The Warden continued smiling, but eyebrows curled downward with anxiety.

His father quickly switched back to his stern tone. "Take me to your prison at once!"

"Of course, of course! Jailbot?"

At the sound of his creator's command, Jailbot morphed into his wheelless carriage form, like that of a roller coaster cart, with a seat wide enough for Warden and his dad to sit together, Warden on the left, his father on the right. As Jailbot ascended toward the stormy skies, the lady ghost came out of hiding, and flew as fast after him as her spiritual form would carry her. Fortunately for her, she was able to defy gravity altogether, and fly completely off the ground up to Jailbot's height, just ten feet behind him. As if the Warden suspected he was being watched, he raised an eyebrow, and turned around his left shoulder. He shifted his head in all directions, but, from the look of things, all he could see were the gray clouds and aerial views of the town below him. How odd; he could've sworn someone was following him.

Warden's father spun his son's upper torso with both hands. "Get your head out of the clouds, you fool!"

In actuality, the Warden's suspicions were not unwarranted. The ghostly woman was still pursuing him, only she was now hidden  
above the thick layer of clouds that coated the sky, peering down roughly every ten seconds to make sure she was still on target.

After several minutes, Jailbot was entering another one of the numerous, bizarre dimensions he would pass over in order to eventually reach Superjail. The sea of clouds were evaporating into thin air. In place of earthy terrain or human civilization was an expansive ocean of liquid, cheddar cheese. There was a multitude of macaroni that were the size of cars, floating aimlessly on the watery surface. Between the gaps of open cheese sauce, a school of man-sized peas swam around the gigantic pasta, submerging their limbless, eyeless, spherical bodies underneath the orange ocean, and, every few seconds, leaping straight up into the air to let out dolphin-like cries with their human mouths.

The Warden gasped. A nonsense-loathing man like his father would surely get his knickers in a twist if he so much as glanced at the wild wilderness below.

He hastily cupped his hands over his dad's eye and monocle. "I'm really sorry, Papa, but if you wanna see Superjail, you need to keep your eyes closed for a minute!"

Warden's father heeded this warning, but not without protesting the idea of his son obstructing his sight like this. "Wh-what the Devil are you up to now?!"

Warden arched his head downward toward Jailbot's face, and whispered, "Step on it, buddy!"

Jailbot anxiously picked up the speed, rushing so fast that, in the blink of an eye, they had zipped straight out of the boundaries of the macaroni sea. The moment Jailbot and his friends had disappeared, the ghostly woman flew down from the gray clouds, and gasped in terror, not only at the sight of the extremely peculiar location she found herself in, but also because she had _lost_ sight of Jailbot, the Warden and his father!

"NO!" She cried, more tears running down her face. "NO NO NO! Oh, WHY did I have to go and hide?!"

She made a sharp dash for the macaroni sea, soaring above the enormous pasta while scanning the ocean surface in every direction. "Warden?! Warden, where are you?!"

"AUW-AUW-AUW!" Another dolphin-pea sprang up from beneath the water, and would've sailed right into the ghost woman, had he not startled her into backing away at the last second.

Before everyone knew it, they were approaching the purple and yellow clouds that formed into the image of the Warden's head.

The face of the real Warden lit up again as he moved his hands away from his father's face. "Papa, Papa, here we are!"

"Well, it's about bloody time!" His father snapped, smacking the Warden's hands away from him.

After the Warden shook his fingers in pain, the blinding wave of sunlight faded to reveal the distant view of Superjail. At first glance, it seemed to consist of only a single tower resting on the very top of the mound that sat within the lava-filled mouth of a massive volcano. That tower, however, which turned out to be the one shaped like the Warden's head and top hat, was just the tip of this iceberg of insanity and whimsy that the Warden happily called home. From their Jailbot carriage, he and his father gazed at numerous yellow-coated structures that made up the rest of Superjail. The rectangular penitentiaries and facilities lined with rows of barred windows; the dome observatories equipped with elongated cannons in place of telescopes; the giant doll heads and human eyes resting precariously on towering metal springs; the multitude of slides, tunnels, and railway tracks that looped and snaked between the buildings they connected; the striped factory chimneys that spouted out royal-purple smoke in geometric shapes, like stars, hearts, and diamonds. An assortment of heavily-saturated rainbows arched out from random sections of the baby-blue sky, stretching miles across the prison borders.

The Warden beamed. Even under these less-than-ideal circumstances, he couldn't help but feel a warm sense of contentment filling up inside him just looking at Superjail. Sure, it was full of violent felons with abhorrent safety standards for its employees, but he could _control_ the chaos, which was what made it so damn beautiful to him.

His father, on the other hand, viewed the Warden's humble abode with a look of disdain. He lowered his eyelids, and slowly shook his head as he folded his arms across his chest. "Just as I expected, Warden; your prison is just as absurd and infantile as you dreamed it would be. As much of a failure as your life has been, you have never once failed at disappointing me."

Warden's heart sank, his words hitting him like he'd just been kicked in the crotch. He searched desperately in his mind for the best explanation he could produce, forcing another smile when he did find one. "B-But-uhhh...that's-that's the beauty of it, Father! Yeah! Sure, Superjail may SEEM like a magical playhouse with its rainbows and goofy-looking buildings, but that's just a mask for the brutal and merciless executions and punishments I have in store for my inmates! It gives prisoners a false sense of security before they meet their untimely demise! C'mon, I'll show ya!"

SMACK! Dear old Dad slapped him again, this time across his left cheek. "How dare you tell me what _I_ want to see in your prison! I'm your father, and you'll take me anywhere I ask you to, and ONLY when I ask you to!"

Warden continued smiling, gently rubbing his sore face with his left hand. "Oh, o-of course! Wh-what was I thinking?"

His father turned his head away, a cold expression still on his face. "What _were_ you, indeed? Now, take me to your execution stations at once!"

"Y-Yes, Father!" Warden pointed toward the ground. "Jailbot, take us down!"

Jailbot began descending northeast, but not before throwing the net containing the Guayes over his right shoulder. Jean and Paul, just starting to regain consciousness, screamed at the top of their lungs as they sailed through the air in a mile-long arch, and crashed right through the roof of another nearby penitentiary, leaving a gaping, jagged hole in its place.

The Guayes were now on top of each other in a discombobulated heap on the floor of another prisoner cell, still trapped in Jailbot's net, with fragments of broken concrete and debris sprinkled across their mangled bodies. As the blood seeped out from the disoriented couple, a portion of it streamed down a narrow crack in the floor, past rows and rows of other cells until it reached a bronze-orange, underground chamber, and landed in a pool of thick, red liquid with a quiet, unsuspecting plink.

If one were to take several steps back, they could see that the drop of blood had fallen into the open hatch of a 10-foot-tall, silver, cylindrical tank, labeled with the word "RED" in bold, red letters on the front. Toward the bottom of the tank was a hand-sized water valve with a red handle. From there, an inmate placed an empty, metal paint can underneath the nozzle, turned the handle to the left, and allow enough red paint to pour out until the bucket was about three-quarters full. He then promptly turned off the valve, rejoined his group, and set the bucket of paint down beside him. He then grabbed a long roller brush, and assisted his comrades in painting what appeared to be the most massive Lego-esque toy brick anyone had ever seen!

In fact, the entire chamber served as the painting area for more than twenty other gigantic, interlocking toy bricks, each approximately ten feet tall, and ranging in a variety of shapes, from cubes to rectangles to semicircles to beamed arches. It took roughly one dozen inmates to color a single gray brick into its assigned coat of paint. There was one group painting an arch in royal-blue, another making a yellow cube, and another coloring a neon-green triangle. One gang of inmates had just finished painting an orange pyramid, and were now stepping back to admire their hard work. However, when they looked around the backside, they could see one of their colleagues, a lanky Caucasian with a red beret and a black curled mustache, using his own artist palette and brush to finish a colossal mural that he'd painted on the entire back of the pyramid! With an elated smile, he proudly revealed his piece to his comrades: a golden sun setting in the teal-blue ocean in a sky that was colored with a red-to-purple gradient. While it was lovely piece in its own right, and probably took God-knew-how-long to finish it, the inmates didn't pay the least bit of attention to it, and proceeded to beat the artist to a bloody pulp, repeatedly hammering him with their roller brushes.

Coincidentally, Jailbot, the Warden, and his father were just sailing right over the riot taking place, keeping a safe distance of thirty-five feet above the fight. The Warden presented the area to his his honored guest as if he were a passionate tour guide, paying absolutely no heed to the violence breaking out below.

"Here at Superjail, our labor sites are execution stations in their own right! If a prisoner doesn't want to reform, but has managed to avoid the electric chair or firing squad, they'll more than likely die during their hours of vigorous hard work!"

As the Warden spoke, he and his father passed by several more incidents of discord throughout the chamber. One group of inmates was being crushed by a gray cube brick, their legs all sticking out from the bottom and kicking in the air. Another prisoner was painting one of the top bumps on a rectangle when he lost his balance, fell backwards, and splattered into a mess of blood with his bones and organs scattered on the ground. About fifty feet to his right, five inmates were getting high off of the colored fumes rising from their individual paint buckets, but so much so that the flesh and hair covering their heads began to melt and deteriorate, revealing their bare skulls with their eyeballs and noses falling out of their sockets.

Jailbot then lead his passengers through an open garage door, and out toward a vast, grassy park, where Superjail would hold outdoor events like Field Day. There, they hovered past the Warden's league of goliath henchmen; the ten, brainless, hundred-foot-tall ogre versions of their master, wearing nothing but neon-yellow hard hats, and the purple-and-brown tool belts they used to cover their crotches like loin cloths. They were currently assembling a cityscape out of the brick toys; a full mile of lengthy skyscrapers and towers lined up in a horizontal row, built with a patchwork of pastel colors instead of each building consisting of a single color. The giants had also laid down a single, black, flat, plastic road that stretched to both ends of the city, split in half by a solid, yellow traffic line. Between the toy road and architecture was a beige brick sidewalk, which was decorated with blue postal boxes, fenced saplings, modern-day street lamps, and even a variety of multi-racial, man-sized minifigures, all built out of the standard, miniature toy bricks instead of the enormous ones used for the buildings. A pink, bow-shaped brick fell off the black, pig-tailed head of an Asian child minifigure standing at a crosswalk, but one of the Warden ogres gently picked it up with his right thumb and pointer finger, and placed it back with an affectionate smile on his face.

The Warden continued giving his enthusiastic tour. "But those who DO respect Superjail, willing to work long and hard to make it a better place for me, will have all its beauty and wonders bestowed upon them!"

At the last few words of the Warden's declaration, he stood up from his seat, and motioned his right arm into an arch, causing another rainbow to appear across the back of the toy cityscape. As they progressed from the park to the aerial view of the Candy Quarries, the Warden's Father glanced at the environment with a cynical sneer.

"How childish. Why waste your resources and time making playthings for yourself when your prisoners could be doing meaningful labor for the _outside_ world, like building mechanical parts or digging in a coal mine? What would law-abiding citizens have to benefit from the prisoners wallowing in sugary sweets or playing with toy blocks?"

The Warden struggled to produce a response. "W-Well, uh, heh heh, i-it's just that I-I, um-"

"You thought that those methods would be too 'boring' for you, so you decided to build your entire prison based only on what seemed like 'fun!'" Warden's father folded his arms again, and gave his back a sharp turn away from his son. "Humph! It seems you never truly have grown up."

Feeling the full brunt of his dad's harsh words, the Warden let out a despondent sigh, and pulled out a black walkie talkie, speaking in a quiet, melancholy voice. "Jared, Alice, s-suspend the activity of all the labor sites immediately. We're gonna do a complete overhaul of the work assigned to our inmates."

The Warden pulled the walkie talkie back into his pocket, and arched his back forward in a slouch of depression.

Alice knocked three times against a silver, metal door with her right knuckles. "Hey, hurry up in there. We gotta get the scumbags outta the work sites so that Warden can make new ones."

Alice was standing outside the door of a walk-in decontamination chamber, a metallic, chrome box about as big as an indoor sauna, locked with a handled shower door with a small, square entrance window. As soon as Alice reported her boss's orders, the door swung open in Alice's direction, letting out a thick wave of white-blue fog from inside the pearl-white room. Jared stepped out, now free from all his mutations, wearing nothing but a salmon-pink towel around the lower half of his torso.

Jared had a contemptuous glaze in his eyes as he proceeded out of the chamber, which happened to be directly inside his office. Apparently, his boss's shenanigans had gotten so out-of-hand that he felt he needed one for his own safety. As Jared continued ranting to his coworker, he stepped behind a beige dressing screen that stood five feet to the left of his desk.

"Stupid mother-fucking bastard Warden. First he gives me radiation poisoning, and then he expects me to be ready to do his bidding just like that." Jared stepped out from behind the screen, now in his signature brown suit, and made his way toward his office door, stopping at the knob. "I swear, Alice, with all psychopath puts us through, I'm surprised we still haven't..."

All of a sudden, Jared's skin began to turn a hot pink, and a coat of blood-red boils started to swell up to the surface of his head, face, and hands. One look at this abhorrent skin condition, and he raced back into the decontamination chamber, screaming in both pain and terror.

The second he'd left, the Twins reappeared behind his dressing screen, the one on the right holding their intergalactic spell book with both hands.

The left Twin began the sentence. "Hmm. I guess when humans ask to 'give them some skin...'"

The right flipped through several pages of the book, and turned it toward his brother so he could reveal the page depicting an illustration of a human arm covered in red boils. "...they did not mean the Itchy Skin of the Martian carbon mites."

Both Twins shared a monotonous laugh. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

With that, the Twins disappeared again, off to further satiate their appetite for mischief elsewhere.

Over the next hour or so, the Warden and his father continued their tour of Superjail, but no matter how many prisoners were slaughtered in every section they visited, Warden's dad remained a deeply unsatisfied customer. In the Candy Quarries, Warden showed him four seven-foot-tall gingerbread men lashing at a human chain gang with red licorice whips as they trudged through a field of gooey, pink taffy. After his father stuck his nose up at them, Warden issued another call on his walkie talkie. In hardly any time at all, one of the Warden's purple robot henchmen mowed down the inmates and sentient cookies into a trail of crumbs, blood and human organs. Warden and his father passed the bobbing doll heads on giant springs, and the nearby slides that took inmates and staff from one facility to another. By the time they had left, a pair of enormous, mechanical arms with white-gloved hands began smashing the doll heads and slides to smithereens with equally-enormous mallets. In fact, every single site they visited suffered the same fate. The Grand Prix race track, the sentient flower and vegetable gardens, the colosseum for guard tryouts, the movie theater, all were granted their untimely destruction as a token of disapproval from the Warden's father.

The Warden gazed at the destruction behind him with a look of sheer devastation, clawing his right hand over his heart as if it were aching physically as well as emotionally. During the time he knew him in civilian life, the Warden gotten rather used to his dad tarnishing every source of joy he could find in his childhood, right down to the simple pleasure of having sweet dreams at bedtime. Yet, despite everything he'd suffered, there was still a small part of him that kept dreaming for the moment he would make his father proud, something he could say or do that would've truly compelled his father to say, through actions or words, "I love you." Call this undying wish what you may: a natural desire for all humankind, a delusion as a result of Stockholm Syndrome, another one of the Warden's twisted fantasies at play. Where this feeling came from didn't matter to him. Even after years of never seeing his father, the Warden couldn't help but feel a twinge of shame for never being able to please his Papa. Once in a rare while, he would wonder what he could've said or done that would've made him genuinely happy, and if there was some way he could do that now, even after being away from his father for such a long time.

If there was ever a moment that would've killed any hope the Warden had of earning his father's love, this would very likely be it. After all he'd dismantled and demolished for him in Superjail thus far, his glare of callousness and disinterest remained unchanged. He still wasn't satisfied, and, from the looks of things, probably would never be satisfied, officially confirming the Warden's deepest fear that he was completely incapable of bringing any joy to his father's life. Even his mere existence, especially in this current, bonkers, Willy Wonka-esque persona, seemed like a dreadful curse he wished he could eradicate off the face of the Earth.

After a moment, the Warden abruptly turned his back away from his father. He leaned over Jailbot's side again, and covered his mouth with his right hand as his cheeks began to inflate, as though he were about to vomit. During the brief seconds he knelt there repressing his regurgitation, his entire face was colored with a highly-saturated, rainbow gradient, but the rest of his body and outfit, top hat and all, were instantly _de_saturated into shades of grayscale! After a moment of silent groaning and clenching, the Warden took a hearty gulp, and forced the sickness back down his gullet, reverting his colors back to their normal pigments in the process. The Warden was now sitting on his knees, panting and holding his head up with his right hand as immense drips of sweat ran down his flushed face. He seemed to have just dodged a bullet, but something else told him that he wouldn't be able to keep this sickening feeling hidden for much longer.

Unfortunately, the turmoil in his heart and stomach was only a fraction of the chaos and catastrophe still stewing in store for the Warden. The Twins were still popping in and out of the Superjail courtyard, offices, and penitentiaries, casting spells of mischief on the inmates and faculty. They reduced Alice's red hair into a wad of melting red goop; they merged the Guayes into one body of two heads, four arms, and four legs; they even transformed the four iron bars of Fatty's cell into four, seven-foot-long, neon-blue octopus tentacles. The first constricted his oversized belly, the second wrapped around his mouth to muffle his screaming, the third pulled his pants down, and the forth tore his most prized "possession" right out of him, splashing blood against the cell walls.

There was also the matter of the ghostly woman looking for the Warden. She had just finished searching through the sea of macaroni and cheese, rising out from the yellow-orange water and shaking herself dry. She'd hovered about twenty feet forward until she found the next dimension in front of her: a suburban town of sentient, severed human feet, with houses of enormous shoes, and a terrain of purple sand. Luckily, a ghost's energy never seemed to wear down, since they no longer relied on mortal sustenance to remain active, such as food or sleep. She had all the time in the world to find the Warden...

...But did the Warden have enough time to be found?


	4. Glutton of Punishment

Soon, it seemed like the Warden's father had left his mark on every single sector of Superjail outside the prison cells, courtyard, and faculty offices. The final fractions of fun and frivolity had been reduced to debris and scrap metal, with the corpses of dozens of inmates mixed in with the rubble like an earthquake trail mix.

Such carnage did not go unnoticed by the Warden's vigilant staff. Jared, now free of any physical afflictions whatsoever, screamed with horror the moment he saw the Superjail ruins through the eyeholes of a royal-purple periscope attached to his office ceiling. "WHAT HAPPENED TO SUPERJAIL _THIS_ TIME?!"

A split second later, Jared let go of the yellow periscope handles, and turned his oversized head to the sound of his office door opening, and the voice of his uncharacteristically depressed boss. "I-It's ok, Jared. I issued the order to demolish those sites."

The Warden and his father were standing at the doorway, the ghost greeting the accountant with another unfriendly glare, and his son staring at the floor with his head hanging low, both hands buried deep in his pockets.

Jared would've noticed his manager's sad state much sooner had it not been for the horrifying specter standing before him. With another shout, he pointed to the Warden's father with his right hand. "ANOTHER GHOST BREAKOUT!"

The Warden let out a sigh, not the least bit annoyed from Jared's somewhat misplaced terror, and approached his assistant, staying by his papa's side. "No, Jared. This ghost was resurrected from _civilian_ life. He's not affected by the afterlife here in Superjail."

He then lifted his head up, and gave a sad smile. "Jared, this is my father. Father, this is Jared, my accountant and personal assistant."

Jared gasped, gritting his teeth. "Y-Y-Your _FATHER?!_ _HERE?!_ I-In _SUPERJAIL?!"_

The former prison mogul gave the terrified accountant an intimidating raised eyebrow. "Do you take issue with me visiting my own prison, sir? Does my presence _bother _you?"

Yes, quite frankly, it did. In another fluffy thought bubble, Jared could visualize a black-and-white montage of flashbacks, all of the highlights of Warden's childhood horror stories during his seven-part interview for the Superjail Gazette. He conveniently had a photograph among his piles of scrapbooks for each and every event. There was a body shot of baby Warden teething on the bald head of a decapitated African-American male, most likely either a slave or a prisoner. Another depicted Warden as a toddler wearing a ball-and-chain shackle on his left ankle as he stood in the corner for "time out." He even had a photo of his father lashing his son's back with a whip for writing on a chalkboard "2 + 2 = 22," apparently as corporal punishment for the time he was homeschooled. As if those stories weren't enough to disturb Jared beyond all reason, he also remembered the torment of the Warden's obsession with his father's fairy-tale, Manglefang; how he, Alice, and the Doctor were tied to the waterwheel, and repeatedly whipped and stabbed with spears for calling him out on his delusions. Jared felt incredibly fortunate never having to meet his boss's father. He must've been as ruthless and heartless as the Devil himself to have raised a hellspawn like the Warden. Now, that satanic patriarch was confronting him face-to-face, and all those memoirs Jared had sat through seemed to finally have some merit. If there was any valuable lesson or moral to be learned from the Warden's life story, it was to never, _ever_ provoke his father, or you would have Hell to pay.

Jared wasted no time in taking those lessons to heart, praying that they'd save his skin right now. "N-N-Not at all, sir! I-I'm actually very _honored_ to meet you! Your son has told me all sorts of interesting stories about you, a-all good ones, I assure you, and I just never expected a man of your stature to come and visit a simple little accountant like me."

Jared finished with a wide, toothy smile, hoping the Warden's father would buy into his little white lie. He lowered his eyebrow, no longer suspicious of Jared, but his tone was still very stern, making it difficult to tell whether he truly believed him or not. "Indeed."

Warden's father took a minute to observe Jared's work environment. "So, you're a man of business, eh?" Then returned back toward his face. "I suppose you're the brains of this clown outfit my son calls a prison."

Jared chuckled a bit at that witty retort, but tried to remain humble and polite. "Heh heh, good one, sir. I really don't have any authority here at Superjail, though. I just make sure our finances are stable and that our employees get paid."

"Seems you're the only one in this infernal place with any sort of logical sense."

Jared squeezed his hands together with anxiety. "I take it you don't like Superjail, then?"

The eyes of the Warden's father popped for a moment, and then promptly switched to an impassioned scowl. As his papa proceeded to turn this pleasant conversation into a full-scale tirade, the Warden listened to every word he shouted with dread, frequently wincing whenever he raised his voice or emphasized certain words.

"'Don't like it?!' I absolutely DESPISE it! In all the years _I've_ spent as a prison warden, I've never seen a bigger mockery to our justice system than this preposterous, little fun house my son calls 'Superjail!' It's enough to make any sane person go completely _mad!"_

By now, the Warden was sitting on the floor, pulling down the sides of his top hat so that they covered his ears. His face clenched and his body trembled with emotional pain, as if he were screaming in his mind, "MAKE IT STOP!" Without even taking a single breath, the Warden's father returned back to his calmer, yet still rigid tone of voice, folding his arms again. "I'm surprised that a man in _your_ position doesn't see it the same way."

Jared did several double takes at the Warden and his father, his eyes and jaw open with shock. Could it be true? Someone other than him was finally calling the Warden out on his behavior and _winning?!_ To the point where he had lost any strength of will to stand up for himself?! For someone like Jared, this was beyond miraculous; this was a gift from God. After all these years of being treated like a "failure," "loser," "midget," "big-head," and far too many other names to list, it was his boss's turn to feel like an insignificant peon for once, to get his long overdue retribution for everything his assistant had suffered. Jared had tried to exact revenge on the Warden before, such as the time he knocked him unconscious and tried to run Superjail himself, or even just a few hours ago, when the Warden needlessly tarnished the Doctor's funeral with his botched satanic spell. However, there was one crucial element that made this moment of triumph succeed far above all others: the lack of opposing outside forces. There was absolutely nobody or nothing stopping the Warden's father from condemning his son's sociopathy. No guilty conscience; no third-party intervention; no related or unrelated disaster to distract anyone. Heck, the Warden himself was no longer relevant as a factor for retaliation, given how deafeningly silent he'd been during his father's verbal beat down! As far as Jared could tell, his psychotic employer was as good as finished, socially and emotionally, and this delicious, guiltless victory was all his for the taking.

With the full grasp of this situation sinking into his enormous head, Jared's entire face lit up, his smile beaming and his eyes sparkling with elation. "In all honesty, sir, it's like you can read my mind!"

He wrapped his arms around the left leg of the Warden's father, snuggling his head against his shin, as though he were the big brother he'd never had. "You have no idea what a relief it is to hear another voice of reason in this nut house besides _me!"_

Warden's father gently pried his new fanboy off his leg, and switched his expression from a frown of disinterest to a grin of intrigue. "Well, looks like there _is _something salvageable about this prison after all."

Jared responded with pride. "Why thank you, sir!" Then with a malicious glare toward the Warden, who had a similar look of intimidation as Jared would have given if the tables had been turned (as they so often were.) "Believe me, I can't stand your son's antics anymore than you do! It's like I'm trying to stop a man-sized baby from throwing another tantrum!"

At that, the Warden turned away from his assistant, hugged his knees close to his chest, and began sucking his right thumb, inadvertently proving Jared's harsh accusation to be, to a certain extent, correct.

Warden's father scoffed. "'Son.' Should I even bother calling him that?"

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't."

"I like the way you think, Jared."

Biting his trembling lower lip, the Warden yanked down the rim of his top hat with both hands so that the purple chimney would stretch all the way to the floor, hiding his body from head to toe. What he would've given for the chance to shapeshift into a cheetah, another rocket, or something that would've allowed him to flee from this brutal torment. If only he had the ability to turn invisible, too.

All of a sudden, Alice knocked the office door down with a single kick of her right foot, her Caucasian head revealing nothing but bare flesh. "Hey, Lord Douchebag!"

Ignoring the possibility that she may be interrupting her boss with another matter at hand, the enraged prison guard stormed toward the Warden's top hat, and pulled the base upward so that it had shortened back to its normal size. She then grabbed the horrified man-child by his collar with both hands. "You better do something about those goddamn Twins for what they fucking did to my hair!"

Alice pointed her right finger to the top of her cranium, and a small flare of white light glistened on her scalp, emphasized its baldness.

The Warden's father cringed. "UGH! Warden, what IS that repulsive creature?! She-She's absolutely _hideous!"_

Alice dropped the Warden, and pulled out a handheld, pink mirror out of her skirt pocket, staring at her reflection with misery. "I know! I look like I just came out of chemo with this new hairstyle!"

Sadly, the Warden's father wasn't referring to the ugliness from her lack of hair. When he approached the distraught, transgender damsel, he gestured her entire body. "No no no, I mean, what in the world are you supposed to _be?!_ A manly woman?! A-A womanly man?! It's _disgusting!"_

Alice quickly grabbed the Warden's father by _his_ collar, switching her sneer toward his face instead of his son's. "I'll show _you_ disgusting, you pig!"

Just as Alice was ready to sucker punch his father in the face, the Warden zipped between the two, and pushed back against her right fist with both hands. "No, Alice! _WAIT!"_

The Warden gently lowered Alice's fist, and as he introduced her to his father, he spoke in a rather frantic voice with equally frantic body language to match. "Alice, this is my father! This is the first time he's ever visited Superjail, and he lived so many decades ago in civilian life that he doesn't know about the customs and behaviors of modern times yet! So please, _PLEASE_ don't hurt him! I'll make sure that he understa-"

Warden let out a brief gasp, and covered his mouth with his right hand. A quick glance behind his shoulder, and he could see his father giving him another threatening glare. The Warden had almost made the grave mistake of saying something critical of his dad, a mistake that would've very likely destroyed what little chance he had left of appeasing him. Even though his statement was factually accurate, that his father was, indeed, ignorant of the societal standards of the 21st century, he tried to recover from his gaffe by redefining who he believed was the true ignoramus around here.

"I-I mean, I'll make sure the _inmates_ understand him properly! Yeah! Once they see that my father is really a noble gentleman and _not_ a prejudiced old man, they'll warm up to him in no time at all, and _you_ won't have to worry about being offended ever again! And I promise, I'll find a way to stop the Twins and get your hair back ASAP."

Alice grunted through her nostrils. "Fine." She gently lowered Warden's father back on the floor, and the second he was on his feet, the Warden dusted his coat clean, and adjusted his top hat and bow tie to look neat again. There was probably a snowball's chance in hell that he'd make his father proud at this point, but he didn't want to raise tensions any higher than they already were either.

"So," Warden's father queried with a raised eyebrow, "what's this about 'Twins?'"

Jared nervously tapped the ends of his fingers together several times. "Unfortunately, there's a pair of alien Twin brothers that like to pop in and out of Superjail, and cause trouble for their own amusement."

"How long has _this_ been going on?"

"Several years now, I'm afraid."

"WHAT?!"

_AAAAOOOORRRR! _The second Warden's father exclaimed his outrage, everyone covered their ears to the piercing sound of a monstrous roar coming from outside. As soon as it had ceased, they rushed to the nearest window, the three-panels of glass panes from inside the Warden's office, and gasped at the horrific sight before them.

Scattered around the courtyard were dozens of Superjail inmates, all cursed with some sort of intergalactic spell. The Guayes were still merged into one body of two heads and eight limbs. The obscenely undernourished Skinny was now morbidly obese, his waist, limbs, and face transformed into flabby flops of saturated fat. Lord Stingray's head had turned into an actual, navy-blue stingray, and was now flailing off his shoulders gasping for water, leaving nothing but an empty neck in its place. Sweet Cheeks, aka Beefy, noticed his tattoo of a black king cobra wielding a machete leaping out from the bottom of his left forearm, and standing on the back of its tail as a six-foot-tall, three-dimensional snake, similar to how the Triplets had turned the images of the Superjail Inquisitor to life. He and seven other prisoners fled in panic as the snake repeatedly swiped the knife he held in his mouth. During their chase, the sentient skin art managed to decapitate four criminals with one swing, including Sweet Cheeks.

The roar that the gang had heard a minute ago was coming from the twenty-limbed monstrosity that the Twins had fashioned out of the radiation barrel. It was currently standing in the center of the courtyard, using four of his tentacles as fifty-foot-tall legs while the remaining sixteen were circling about seventy-five feet above the ground, turning 360 degrees around the monster's cylindrical body. Each tentacle was spaced about twenty feet apart from each other, and had a single inmate wrapped tight around its tip, screaming at the top of their lungs. If one didn't know any better, it would be easy to assume that they were on some sort of carnival swing ride that was decorated to look like a cartoon monster.

In the midst of his high-pitched wailing, Fatty blew out a quart of sea-green vomit, which, thanks to the speedy wind pushing against him, flew directly behind the pudgy pervert, and splattered all over Nicky's face. "GEMMIE OFFA THIS THING!" He cried, wiping the puke off of him.

The Twins reappeared fifty feet to the monster's left, staring up at him with neutral smiles.

The left Twin spoke to their pet rather nonchalantly. "You heard him, boy. Let the nice humans go."

The right Twin flipped to another page of their book, and, with a brief glance at the text, and a snap of his left fingers, the barrel monster immediately released the inmates from his grip, sending them flying hundreds of feet across Superjail in every direction. One its captives happened to be Jack Knife, who was launched to the far west, and landed outside of Superjail altogether, in the bare, dirt-brown terrain of the volcano circling the entire prison. He lay there on his chest in a daze of spinning stars, but once he quickly regained his bearings, he ran ahead cheering in jubilation, ready to embrace his freedom once again.

It seemed that the Twins' pet was tired from swinging his arms so much. He let out a loud, bellowing yawn, covering his mouth with one of his tentacles, and let the back of his barrel body drop toward the ground, closing all three eyestalks. The remaining inmates behind him scrambled to escape as his enormous torso came careening closer and closer to them.

The Twins simply stood back, spectating with a pair of smiles. "Timberrrrrr..." And then instantly teleported out of sight.

BOOM! The impact of the monster's fall caused a massive seismic wave to spread across Superjail. The violent, intangible force was visualized with evenly-spaced sets of thick, wiggling, white lines that crescendoed along with the speed of the tremor. The cement that made up the courtyard flew into the air as gigantic, jagged chunks, and, after a split second, they all plummeted back to the earth, turning the recreational area into a field of rubble. The only remaining structure left in the path of the quake was another Warden-shaped tower, a semi-replica of the one that housed the Warden's bedroom, from which its owner and his guests were currently standing inside, behind the panels of windows that were fashioned to look like the ring of cloth at the bottom of the Warden's top hat. Once the white waves sped past it, the entire building toppled backward, as though it were a giant chess piece, sending everyone inside it screaming and tumbling against the walls, dodging the flying furniture and decor that came their way. Fortunately, in the midst of their fall, Jailbot burst in through one of the windows, and pulled out three claw arms to individually wrap the Warden, Alice, and Jared around their torsos. Jailbot offered a fourth arm to the Warden's father, but he returned the robot's favor with a cold snarl, slapping his claw away from him, and flying himself out of the collapsing building by simply passing his body through the wall in front of him. Clearly, the arrogant old geezer wasn't even willing to get off his high horse in matters of life or death (or afterlife, as it were).

Jailbot dashed out the hole he'd left on the window, hovering about a hundred feet above the tower so that his friends could watch the scene from a safe distance. The tower continued collapsing for about two seconds more until it crash-landed on its right side. From top to bottom, the entire vertical half of the Warden's office building was reduced to heaps of fragmented, yellow bricks, either gathered in piles or scattered across the dirt. All the while, the Twins' pet monster had taken a siesta where he lay, resting four of his tentacles across his barrel belly as he let out some rhythmic snoring.

The Twins reappeared behind the sleeping monster, letting out quiet, monotonous laughter to themselves, careful not to wake up their pet. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

As Jailbot lowered his friends on their feet, they gazed at the tower ruins with wide eyes and dropped jaws. The Warden could feel more tears brimming behind his glasses. "Oh no! Not my office, too!"

With his and Jared's workspaces gone, there wasn't a single structure outside the prison cells still standing in all of Superjail. What was once the Warden's dream home now looked more like a desolate nightmare. Even the remaining inmates, who had noticed the destruction through their barred square windows, didn't bode well with this situation at all. As much as they despised being in jail in the first place, at least Superjail gave them more opportunities to be outside of their cells while still serving their time, perhaps more so than all the other prisons on the planet combined. Now it looked like they were going to die of boredom long before they could finish serving their time.

One look at the Warden's father, though, and perhaps they may have preferred the safety of a quiet, boring cell...

His ghostly face had turned a shade of dark-green as a substitute for red. His eyebrows and teeth were clenching with fury, with rivers of ectoplasmic sweat running down his head. He took several grunting breaths through his nose, letting this anger fester inside him for a moment, and once it came to a full boil, he turned his entire body toward his son, who was flinching and trembling with fright again.

"WARDEN, THIS IS THE LAST_STRAW!"_

The brunt from his father's shouting at "straw" caused the Warden to fall backward and sit on the ground, gazing up at him with fear as he towered over him again. Alice, Jared, and Jailbot took several steps back, standing about six feet behind the Warden's father. The Twins were also rather startled by this furious phantom, and carefully peeked their heads around the ends of the monster's tentacle legs, only allowing their foreheads and eyes to be visible as they eavesdropped on the extremely loud conversation in front of them.

"IT HAS BECOME ABUNDANTLY CLEAR TO ME THAT YOU ARE NOT FIT TO BE THE WARDEN OF THIS OR ANY OTHER PRISON OF ANY KIND! I WILL NO LONGER SIT IDLY BY, AND ALLOW YOU TO CONTINUE TARNISHING MY LEGACY WITH YOUR REIGN OF SHEER IDIOCY! AS THE ORIGINAL FOUNDER OF THE PRISON YOU INHERITED, I SHALL TAKE BACK WHAT IT RIGHTFULLY MINE, AND HEREBY RECLAIM MY PLACE AS THE OFFICIAL AND PERMANENT WARDEN OF THIS ABOMINABLE INSTITUTION FORMERLY KNOWN AS 'SUPERJAIL!'"

Everyone let out another gasp, the Warden's the most shrill and horrified of all. He finally found the courage to protest his papa, but out of desperation rather than anger or bravery. There were so many drips running down his face, it was hard to tell if he was sweating, crying, or both. _"__**WHAT?!**_ B-B-BUT PAPA, YOU _CAN'T_ BE THE WARDEN! Y-YOU'RE _DEAD_, A-AND_I'M_ THE ONE THAT FOUNDED SUPERJAIL!"

The Warden's father glanced over his supernatural body with another wickedly enthusiastic smile, speaking in a composed, yet extremely cold manner. "Ah, but that's the beauty of it, my stupid boy. I am without a body, yet my soul remains in tact, and in this plane of existence, ghosts are just as tangible and visible to the rest of the world as those who are still alive. I can never truly die because souls are immortal!" To add dramatic emphasis to the last sentence of his soliloquy, he arched his back forward, facing his son eye-to-eye. "You know what they say: even when I die, I'll always be with you..._FOREVER!"_

Amused by the bitter irony of perverting an ordinarily comforting perspective on death into a sadistic means to eternally torture his child, the Warden's father topped it off with a maniacal cackle that sent deep chills down his spectators' spines, even those of the hardened criminals watching from afar.

_"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!"_

Just when it looked like the Warden couldn't get anymore desperate, he got back on his knees, and wrapped his arms around his father's legs, his voice wailing out as his begging intensified. "PAPA, PLEASE, NO! ANYTHING BUT SUPERJAIL! THIS IS MORE THAN JUST A JOB TO ME; THIS IS MY _HOME_, MY _SANCTUARY!_ IF I LOSE SUPERJAIL, I'LL LOSE _EVERYTHING!" _He let go of his father as he continued pleading_._ "I-I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING ELSE: I'LL GIVE YOU MY SOUL, MY MONEY, MY BELONGINGS, I'LL EVEN GIVE YOU _ALICE!_ BUT PLEASE, _PLEASE_ DON'T TAKE SUPERJAIL!"

Alice glared and folded her arms. "Thanks for selling me out, asshole."

Fortunately for her, the Warden's father shoved his right hand against his forehead, pushing him away. "You're _not_ going to bargain your way out of this, you pathetic excuse for a son! _I'm_ the original owner of this prison, I'm _still _able to rule it over, so I say it's _mine!"_

Warden zipped back to his coworkers, grabbing his accountant by his shoulders. "Jared, help me out here! H-He can't possibly be allowed to take Superjail just like _that!_ There's gotta be some sort of rule for this or something!"

Jared responded to his terrified employer with a shockingly aloof, unassuming voice. "Well, if he _is_ the original founder, and is still of sound mind and body, er, soul, in this case, then, technically, yes. He _can_ retake Superjail as his own."

"WHAT?! NO! Y-You can't possibly be on board with this, Jared! You don't want my father as your new boss, right?! I-I thought we were_friends!"_

Sadly for the Warden, Jared was not pulling back any emotional punches against his panic-stricken employer. With another fuming glare, he shoved the Warden away to make him release his grip on his shoulders, and proceeded to give his rant with equally angry body language._"FRIENDS?!_ After all these years of belittling me, bullying me, treating me like an inferior, and making me slave away to your every absurd demand?! _That's_ your idea of a friend?!"He continued his response a more casual, yet still very callous tone, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm sorry, Warden, but you brought this on yourself. This is your comeuppance for treating your inmates and assistants so badly for so long. You should consider yourself lucky; losing your job is the very _least_ you deserve for all that you've done!"

Warden redirected his attention to his guard, clasping his hands together. "Alice, please tell me you're not mad, too! I'm sorry that I said I would trade you for Superjail! I didn't really mean it, honest!"

Alice scoffed, and gave her head a sharp turn away from the group in front of her. "I'm not joining either of you dicks. _You're_ a pain in the ass, and your _dad_ is a misogynistic prick."

At that, the Warden's father floated toward Alice, and did a complete 180 on his demeanor, switching from a vengeful ruler to a humble, repentant gentleman.

"Miss Alice, I will concede to this. I am ignorant to the ways of the, erm...multi-gendered population, and I do apologize for my insensitive remarks. I promise you that if you assist me in becoming the new Warden, I shall restore your hair, and use as much of my authority as possible to help you become the lady you've always wanted to be."

Alice redirected her attention to Warden's father with wide eyebrows. "You'll seriously get my penis removed and stuff?"

He gently held her left hand, his smile growing more seductive. "My dear, I've castrated more prisoners within a single minute. Freeing _you_ of your manhood will be second nature to me." Warden's father then slid his right pointer finger across his neck. "I'll even put a bounty on the heads of those Twins so that they can never cause you or anyone else more trouble ever again."

The Twins grabbed their necks with both hands in alarm, and immediately teleported away, taking their sleeping pet with them, before such a deadly plan could come to fruition.

Alice smiled, and gave Warden's father a firm handshake. "Ok, I'm in!"

At this point, the Warden was so petrified, unhinged at seeing his allies siding with his abuser, he could hardly speak. "No...Th-this can't be happening..."

Jailbot let out several beeps of disapproval, glaring at the gang with his facial monitor. He then embraced the Warden close to his solid, white torso, his screen repeatedly flashing a digital, red heart. Warden snuggled his head against his robot buddy; he knew he could count on him to remain loyal.

However, this didn't seem to sway Jared's stance on the situation any differently, although he did give a rather polite, sympathetic rebuttal, understanding Jailbot's programming to be supportive of his creator at all times. "I'm sorry, Jailbot, but you have no say how we write the regulations or administrate the faculty here in Superjail. You're really more of a servant than a staff member, pal."

The disheartened robot trembled his green lips, and then burst into digital tears, sharing one more tender hug with his best friend.

"Goodbye, Jailbot." The Warden sobbed. "Be good for my father, ok?"

With a devastated nod, Jailbot released him from his arms, and reluctantly hovered to the right of the Warden's father, his beady eyes staring down at the ground.

Warden glanced up at his father once again, trying his best to articulate through his tears. "P-Papa, I-"

"Not another word out of_you."_ His father growled. "You've been nothing short of a disgrace to me and your own prison staff, and I shan't allow you be one ever, ever again."

Suddenly, the Warden felt another wave of nausea filling up in his stomach again. His lower abdomen wiggled and let out deep grumbling and bubbling sounds, as if some sort of unnatural concoction was frothing inside him. The Warden to wrapped his right hand around his belly, moaning and gritting his teeth in pain. As he sat there on his knees writhing in sickness, more drips of sweat ran down all the sides of his head, and his body began to desaturate again, this time as whitened shades of his flesh and clothing colors instead of full-blown grayscale.

While Alice and Jailbot watched their ex-manager with concern, and his dad with indifference, Jared had been searching through an array of paperwork at the bottom of a gray, double-drawer file cabinet. It stood erect in the middle of a pile of rubble, severely dented but still functioning despite the damage from the quake. Jared skimmed through what seemed like a miles worth of files, forms, and other documents until, "Aha! Here it is!"

Jared pulled out piece of white-beige parchment with his right hand. It was some sort of three-paragraph contract, written in typed, 8-point text, which looked like unintelligible squiggles from where Alice and the others stood. There were several blank spaces within the sentences for the involved signer to fill in, in addition to the long signature line at the bottom. On the top of the paper were the words "Contract of Resignation" in bold, black, cursive calligraphy.

Purposely ignoring the Warden's state of agony, he handed him the form and an ink pen with a smile on his face. "Just fill in the blanks and write your signature at the bottom."

The Warden took the contract with a trembling left arm, and gently placed the paper on the ground, holding the pen with a jittery right hand. He recited the contents of the document out loud with squinting eyes, and a very shaky, almost sleepy tone of voice, which grew progressively weaker as he continued reading. "I, th-the W-Warden...of S-Superjail, h-h-hereby...s-surrender...m-m-my official...position...to-"

Warden's stomach let out some more groaning, boiling noises, and a lump the size of a baseball made its way up his esophagus and into his mouth. The pigments in his body and clothes had become grayscale again, and another rainbow gradient lit up his face. With constricted pupils in his popping eyes, the Warden covered his lips with his right hand again, but this time, the sickness was too strong to hold back. In a matter of milliseconds, the Warden got down on all fours, his face now colorless as well, and hurled out what looked like several gallons of a thick, runny, liquid-like substance, completely soaking the contract below. No matter how much this gooey material spread out on the ground, it maintained an even pattern of heavily-saturated, vertical stripes of the primary rainbow colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. There was also an array of miniature, mystical charms and shapes swimming in the colorful goop: four flying pink dolphins with purple bird wings, a white unicorn with a golden horn, a dozen red hearts and yellow stars with the Warden's eyes and gap-toothed mouths for faces, Poseidon riding a seahorse and holding his triton, a bouncing pink bunny (eerily similar to the one Jack Knife had once stolen), and swirling sweeps of gold, glittering fairy dust.

It may have been the most magical episode of vomiting that anyone had ever seen, but it was still vomit nonetheless, and Alice and Jared couldn't help but grimace at seeing the Warden retch. "Ewwww!"

It also sounded like an incredibly painful experience for the Warden. As the rainbow-colored slop poured out of his mouth, he clawed his gloved hands into the dirt, bawling out in anguish with more tears raining down his face. He paused for a few brief seconds to catch his breath, but then heaved out another few gallons of puke.

As the river of rainbow regurgitation streamed away from its maker, it moved toward the Warden's father, as if this substance had some sort of consciousness of its own. Once the front tip was directly underneath his shoes, it made a leap for the soles, making direct physical contact despite him being a transparent ghost. As the rest of the fluid flowed upward, a wave of new pigments made its way up the soul of the Warden's father. His spectrum of ghostly green colors was being replaced with the original clothing and skin colors he wore during his time in life, moving from the bottom of his shoes to the very tip of his top hat. In hardly any time at all, the Warden's dead father looked like the spitting image of living self!

Warden's dad observed his newfound image with eyes of sheer shock. Judging from how he looked on the outside, it seemed he was given a fresh version of his original body. To his surprise, though, he found himself still hovering in midair, a trait that should have been eradicated immediately if he was truly alive again. Apparently, the substance coating him did not give him an actual physical body, but rather the illusion of one. He was still a ghost, but now, he was, essentially, painted to give the appearance of the living.

By stark contrast, his son looked like he was on the brink of death. The Warden's entire signature image was drained of all color, replaced with shades of gray, black, and white. He was still kneeling there on all fours moaning with nausea, his tongue hanging over his mouth and dripping white-gray saliva. After a second or two, his arms began to wobble, and the next instant, they gave out altogether, causing him to flop flat on his chest, his head resting on its right side.

Judging from all those mystical charms that were mixed in, there had to be more to this new form than simply his outward image. The Warden's father glanced at his now-fleshy hands, and after a moment of contemplation, he snapped his right fingers. POOF! In a cloud of black smoke, a golden scepter appeared in his hand, its spherical tip lined with pearls and a round, red ruby resting on top. He then glanced down at the rest of his torso, and, with intense concentration, he bent his legs downward. As he raised himself back up, his black suit and top hat morphed into a royal-purple, velvet king's robe, complete with a fluffy, white collar, and a matching St. Edward's crown resting on his head.

"What is this?" Warden's father queried in astonishment. "Reality itself now kneels before me?"

So far, that guess seemed promising, but he wondered if he could he drop the other shoe as well. With an eager smile, the Warden's father waved his right arm backward, and then swooped it upward, as if he were pretending to give something an underhanded throw. Another black cloud poofed in front of him, and a roll of red carpet appeared at his feet, stretching farther and farther out ahead of him as if it would never end.

The Warden's father's face slowly changed from wide-eyed surprise to diabolically passionate sneer. A disquieting sense of apprehension was instilled in the hearts of Jared, Alice, Jailbot, and the inmates.

"YES! I...AM..._REBORN!"_

With a blood-curdling guffaw of sinister laughter, the Warden's father scooped both hands up in the air, and began to levitate toward the immensely stormy clouds, stopping when he was approximately fifty feet above the ground. Where his son would normally spout rainbows or fireworks, his dad flew with a comet tail of flame, and unleashed flashes of lightening bolts.

As if they starting to regret siding with him in the first place, Jared, Alice and Jailbot rushed to the unconscious Warden, Jailbot cradling him in his arms. Alice then turned to the Warden's power-mad dad, cupping her hands around her lips. "Hey! You gonna help your son or what?!"

Warden's father stopped laughing, but kept wearing his delirious smile, and answered his coworker in what was probably the most icy, narcissistic, and downright savage tone anyone in Superjail had ever heard.

_"FROM THIS DAY ON, I __**HAVE**__ NO SON!"_

He then arched his arms upward, bent his left leg, and pointed his right foot downward. The angled shoe began to emit a glow of blood-red light, nearly blinding the denizens of Superjail with its flashing, rotating streaks of brightness. With an effervescent cheer, the Warden's father bolted straight down at a speed of 100 mph, the red light spreading out toward his body at a spotlight angle, making him resemble a human comet.

_"YAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"_

_WHOOM!_ The second the Warden's father's shining foot smashed against the concrete, the light scaled into an all-out explosion, expanding across all of Superjail. The inmates and employees flinched and squinted as the blast headed toward them, Jailbot trying to shield the Warden with his back, but the brightness was so great that, in less than three seconds, they were completely lost to it. Everything visible within Superjail was hidden beneath an overpowering layer of crimson.

-

Somewhere within the outskirts of a rural, suburban, American town, a line of cars was making its way to the drive-thru ticket booth of an outdoor movie theater. The two-hundred-acre area was bordered with a ten-foot-tall, white fence of pure sheet metal, with two openings on each side of the ticket/toll booth, the left for the entrance, the right for the exit. To the left of the entrance was a billboard-sized sign nailed to the fence. The top of it had bold, red, cursive, neon letters that read "DRIVE-IN THEATER." Beneath it was a white space with a black rectangle frame, and some more words formed with black, marquee letters attached to the center: "Now playing: Desert of the Undead."

Standing before the rows and rows of parked cars, a colossal, fifty-foot screen was playing a black-and-white horror film in which a young, Caucasian, cowboy couple, a burly brunette and his braided blonde, were riding their brown stallions across a vast, Arizona desert in the dark of the night. As the horses warily trotted forward, having only the full moon as their source of light, the upper half of a human skeleton burst out from the sand, beneath the front legs of the cowgirl's horse. It let out a menacing snarl, flailing its bony arms in the air, startling the stallion into standing on its hind legs, which caused its rider to fall on her rear end. Another skeleton, standing on its two feet, grabbed ahold of her shoulders from behind, and began to lean its wide, open jaws toward her screaming face.

As the sounds of shrieking, demonic laughter, splattering blood, and tearing flesh permeated through the theater, the audience watching inside their vehicles seemed quite terrified of this gory, gruesome scene. A brunette mom and dad in their baby-blue SUV noticed their toddler son giggling at the violence from his carseat, and immediately covered his eyes with their right hands. To the right of the SUV, a teenage couple sat at the front seats of their red corvette. A 16-year-old, long-haired ginger, wearing a white blouse and a green skirt, hid her face against the right shoulder of her date: a burly brunette with a slick, greaser hairstyle, blue jeans, and a black leather jacket. As he gave his girl an affectionate hug, a thick stack of $20 bills stood up from inside his left pants pocket. While the young lovers were distracted, Jack Knife, who had been hiding beneath the back seats, arched his head and arms between the headrests of the front seats, snatched up all the money, and ducked back down just as the teens were ready to continue watching the movie.

With a literal hop, skip, and a jump across the backs of the cars, Jack managed to rob several more unsuspecting viewers in less than ten seconds. He leaped behind an elderly hillbilly's green flatbed, and reached through the back window to pickpocket his wallet while he was sound asleep at the driver's seat. Jack then bounded onto the trunk of a vintage, black cadillac, where a rather posh couple was watching from the front seats; a brunette gentleman in a black tux and top hat, and his heavy, curly-haired, blonde date in a red cocktail dress. From them, Jack managed to swipe a pearl necklace from the woman's fat neck, and a baseball-sized diamond from the gentleman's left pocket! It wasn't until he'd already escaped when they noticed their valuables were missing.

Jack then made his way to the back seat of an open hooded, beige convertible. It seemed that the driver was asleep as well, resting his black hooded head against the top of steering wheel. With an ecstatic smile, Jack reached his right hand toward the back of the driver's pants until, all of a sudden, he grabbed Jack Knife's wrist with his left hand. However, what truly frightened Jack was not just the fact that he'd been caught, but that the hand clutching onto his arm was a bony skeleton hand, not a single inch of flesh or muscle tissue to be seen! The driver turned his head direct at Jack's, revealing it to be a bare skull instead of a human face. Jack let out a shriek of terror, and made a hasty retreat out from the back of the corvette, the skeleton arm detaching from the owner's torso to keep a grip on Jack. Unfortunately, Jack had only made it about six steps forward before two pairs of skeleton arms popped out from underneath the gravel, each grabbing him by one of his shins, causing him to land hard on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. As the criminal lay there in a daze, the skeletons holding rose their heads, torsos, and legs from underground, still holding on to Jack by his ankles. Coincidentally, these cadavers were identical to the ones consuming the cowboy couple in the film, and the innocent bystanders watching from their cars quickly put two-and-two together. They all cranked up their keys back into the ignition, and drove as fast as they could through the exit. Alas, there were so many trying to escape at once that it resulted in a ten car pile up blockading the gateway. Six other cars tried to ram through the wreckage, but were instead propelled backwards, landing on their left or right sides with their front fenders crushed from the collision. Finally, just to serve as the cherry on top of this sundae of vehicular homicide, the cars all spontaneously burst into flame, its surviving driver's wailing out in pain.

Ignoring this deadly, and somewhat confusing, conundrum, the skeletons apprehending Jack Knife threw him by his legs into a rectangular cage, made entirely out of connecting human femurs, including the door that was sealed with an iron lock the size of Jack's head. The cage sat at the single seat of a black, wheeled chariot, the carriage decorated with ornamental, rosette carvings around the exterior borders, and a human skull that had been painted with silver, and molded onto the wooden finish on the back. At the reigns were a pair of raven-black pegasi, glaring at their human captive with glowing red eyes. With an ear-piercing whinny and another few bolts of lightening, the demonic horses spread out their gigantic bat wings, dashed several feet forward across the gravel, and made their ascent toward the nighttime skies, their legs still racing despite being airborne. As they began to fly up in the air, Jack could've sworn he was hearing the main chorus of "Night on Bald Mountain" beginning to play from an undisclosed source.

It seemed like the typical routine at first, Jack Knife flying over several bizarre dimensions. Up ahead of him was a one-hundred-foot, red-and-black checkers board, with enormous pieces jumping over one another. Next, a giant, red bowl of sentient alphabet soup, five pieces leaping up from the yellow pool to stand on the edge of the bowl with their stick-figure legs, and spell out the word "HELLO." Then, Jack Knife passed a field made entirely out of a single sheet of white paper, and a spectrum of floating crayons endlessly scribbling against the ground. This followed by a gray matador stadium, where a brown bull was standing at the center on two legs, holding out a photo of a sexy, naked woman, and a Caucasian human male, wearing nothing but false bull horns, was racing toward the picture across the arena on all fours. There was even a dimension where a dozen human-sized hens stood in front of a neverending conveyer belt of white bed pillows, each chicken plucking one feather from the top of their heads in perfect unison, and gently placing it in the opening of the nearest pillow that passed by, going at a rhythmic pace of one feather per second.

It was after going by this last area that Jack Knife some more unusual changes to his routine trip to Superjail. Instead of the Warden's head, the clouds took the form of his father's angry face, including his blue monocle, black top hat, and white mustache. As his mouth opened, and let out its usual wave of white light, it resembled the closest form to jagged teeth that fluffy clouds would allow. Jack Knife always had a rather surprised look on his face every time he arrived back at Superjail, but today, his eyes and jaws gaped even wider with dismay than ever before. The sunny, blue skies were shrouded in dark-gray storm clouds, frequently shooting off violent bursts of thunder and lightening. Where the words "Superjail" once appeared in large, yellow letters spawned a brand-new title, one that appeared in the curling, intricate serifs of bold, black, Chancery text:

_Lord LaVey's Planetary Prison_


	5. Rising Tides

The demonic-pegasus-drawn chariot landed on the blacktop of the Planetary Prison runway. Where aerial vehicles like SuperBlimp, Jailboat, and the Warden's flying eyeball machine once rested were dozens of other carriages, their horses waiting patiently to turn in their cargo of captured prisoners. At first glance, it seemed that the average amount of encaged inmates ranged from as few as one or two to as many as twelve or twenty, the longer carts more crammed with captives than the others. A minute later, the crowd of miserable prisoners and their not-so-noble steeds dispersed to leave an open gap wide enough for an extra-large carriage to make its safe landing: a chariot wide enough to store one hundred inmates in a single trip, pulled by five pairs of exhausted pegasi at the reigns. On that particular carrier, the equine on the front-left, a heavily expectant mare, was wheezing immensely, her eyes and tongue nearly popping out of her skull with each gasp for breath. After a few short wheezes, she let out one, long, high-pitched gasp, all four legs wobbling like they were made of Jello, and when she could draw in no more air, the poor creature collapsed onto her left side, out like a light. The second she hit the pavement, a navy-blue foal slid out from between her back legs, leaving a streak of blood in its path. Hardly giving any time for the newborn to be welcomed into the world, another pair of skeleton henchmen appeared. One sliced the white-blue umbilical cord in two with a scythe while the other tossed the infant like a sack of potatoes into a wooden stable. There, numerous other baby pegasi rested in a long, horizontal row of what looked like navy-blue, iron breasts, artificial replicas of those of their mothers, each one the size of a washing machine. Every foal was given its own mechanical bosom to feed on, suckling on a rubber bottle nozzle attached to its metal nipple. Hanging from the front of the stable roof was a wooden sign with the words "Nursery" painted in light-blue. As for the foal's mother, the two skeletons lifted her corpse with both hands, dumped her into a metal, Western mine cart, and pushed her to the back of a single-file line just twenty feet to the left of the nursery. At least ten other carts, all filled with dead pegasi, were waiting outside an open garage door. At the front of the line, a group of four skeletons was dumping the dead horses onto a large, moving conveyor belt, which lead toward an open, steel, hatch door a mere five feet to the left.

Before long, it was the poor mare's turn to meet her barbaric fate. First, the four skeletons hauled her onto the belt, where she was carried through the door, and into a confined, steel chamber, about the same length and height as a modern-day air vent. Unlike most vents, though, the pegasus had only gone ten feet ahead before every inch of her corpse was abruptly mashed by a automated spike plate that had slammed itself down from the ceiling. The spikes repeatedly crushed her flesh, blood, bones, and organs into a gooey, bluish-pink paste, like how an animal's jaw would chew food. By that point, the conveyor belt had reached its end, and sent its mushy contents falling into a four-hundred-gallon, chrome tub of white liquid, mixed and churned by a pair of artificial, gloved hands with a giant wooden spoon. At the bottom of the tub, a thick, black, duct hose squeezed the mixture down a dangling, fifty-foot-long tube, where it finally made its landing through a vintage, brass, hose nozzle, and into an empty, glass, sauce jar on another conveyor belt.

Beefy sat in front of the belt, in another bronze, underground chamber, with an extremely bereaved Ash chained to left his ankle about ten feet to his right. The two had been assigned to package the pegasus glue after it was done processing, their wrists shackled to the ground with two-foot-long chains, not allowing them to move any farther than their work space. A new jar would move toward Beefy down the belt, and stop to allow more glue to pour out of the hose. Beefy would then be given a few seconds to seal the jar tight with an aluminum lid. The belt would resume moving, to where Ash would place a white, sticker label around the glass base, which read in bold, black letters: "LaVey's Pony Paste: 100% Organic." Just reading those very words were too much for Ash's burnt heart to bare. He bit his lower lip for a moment, and burst into evaporated tears, bawling out hard as he continued working.

At the same time that gray clouds was rising up from Ash's eyes, a thick layer of similarly-shaped, dark-gray clouds were coating every inch of the skies above the prison's exterior, showering an immense downpour with frequent thunder and lightening, as if the place didn't look dreary and gloomy enough as it was. Where the light-yellow structures once stood was an array of gray watch towers, penitentiaries, work sheds, and open fields of either concrete, mud, or gravel, identical to the ones from the mogul's original prison. The entire facility was bordered with a gray, brick wall that stretched beyond the clouds, leaving no visible end to the blockade in sight. The 5,000 square-foot courtyard now served as the jail's epicenter, the hub for all the faculty buildings and prison cells structured around it, bordered with a twenty-foot-tall barricade of solid concrete. There was also an equally-tall, barred, iron gateway dividing the yard in half down its vertical center. The left was reserved for all the Caucasian inmates, with a plank of wood chained across the bars that read "WHITES" in painted, white letters. On the right, placed precisely behind the opposing sign, was another that read "NEGROES" in black. While the Caucasian criminals were given massive amounts boulders to smash in the quarry, dishes to clean in the cafeteria, floors and ceilings to scrub in the hallways, coal to mine underground, and mud bricks to construct more walls, the work was triple fold for the minorities. In addition, the African-Americans were the only prisoners forced to perform the especially dirty tasks, such as unclogging the sewers or shoveling piles of feces from the pegasus stables and dog kennels, signifying that their race was as filthy and vile as the material they had to dispose of.

At one point, a couple of skeleton guards lead a very peculiar class of cuffed prisoners to the gateway: Lord Stingray, Turbie, Skinny, and dozen or so Mexican and Asian inmates. The guards exchanged puzzled looks; the yard was organized with a "black and white" mentality, but this group didn't seem to fall in either category. As a last-ditch solution, one of the skeletons pulled out a blank, wooden sign, hastily painted the word "OTHER" in black, and used a metal hook to attach it underneath the "NEGROES" sign, labeling the two to be synonymous in workload and inferiority. With that problem seemingly resolved, one skeleton pulled the wheeled, gate door open while two more lead the criminals into the "Negro" yard, pointing the blades of their scythes threateningly close to their backs.

Understandably, the inmates were not too keen on these new living conditions (not that they missed the sugar coated bloodbaths that their last prison had to offer), and quite a few of them made an effort to escape, either physically or through psychological escapism. Much to their dismay, the cutthroat cadavers patrolling them were more vigilant and ruthless than Alice and Jailbot combined, as if it were instilled in their undead veins to make an example of any prisoner that put the slightest toe out of line. A middle-aged ginger inmate stopped in the middle of his axing session in the quarry to light a cigarette from his pocket in his right hand. No sooner did he blow the first puff of smoke than one of the skeleton guards blew a high-pitched, coach whistle, and pointed his right arm forward, signaling a pack of four, light-brown Dobermans to sick their master's target. Before long, the destructive dogs had piled on top of the criminal, and were devouring his flesh and innards as if they'd just hunted him down for dinner. The other prisoners in the field watched the carnage with cowardice, and with horrified gasps, they spun back toward the rocks, mining even faster. In another sector, about twenty African-American inmates, including Guns, were stacking bricks and cement to build a new wall around the cafeteria. One "Negro" his late 20's abruptly dropped his brick and trowel, wrapped his arms around his lower abdomen, and made desperate a dash for a nearby door to the men's room, roughly thirty feet to his left. He didn't make it more than ten steps forward before his head was shot clean off, his neck gushing a fountain of blood, and his bowels spilling a puddle of brown sludge from underneath his buttocks, soaking his entire vertical front. His colleagues gasped when they saw one of the five guards watching them from behind, aiming his sniper rifle at the very direction their comrade had been hit. On the outskirts of the jail, behind three rows of work sheds, Nicky had lead three Caucasian, and four African-American inmates to the infinitely tall brick wall in the East Wing. With a confident sneer, he scraped down the cement on one brick with a rusty nail, loosening it enough for him to pull it off the wall altogether. The second the brick was removed, Nicky found himself staring at the front of a pistol, held with two, bony hands, and a bullet shot directly through his throat before he could let out a single scream. After seeing their leader fall face-first against the wall, blood oozing from his mouth and the hole on back of his neck, his comrades all scattered, fleeing in a desperate panic.

As soon as the crowd had dispersed, Jailbot hovered down to Nicky's corpse. He had been restructured to take the form of a limbless delivery cart, his back carrying a pile of twenty other deceased inmates. His new master simply couldn't allow Jailbot to remain loyal to his son, so he had reprogrammed the AI to obey _his_ every command, his glaring, digital face glowing red instead of green. Without so much as a single glance at Nicky's remains, Jailbot grabbed him with two robotic claws, and threw him behind his shoulders, lying on his chest on top of the other bodies. Once Nicky was on board, Jailbot retracted his claw arms, and flew up toward the open, steel door to the Loafer. There, he would prop up his back into a downward angle, similar to how a garbage truck would unload its contents, and dump his blood-soaked cargo onto the metal flooring, a safe fifty feet from the row of enormous, bunsen burner flames. A cluster of claw arms would lower down from the ceiling, grabbing a single inmate by his cranium toward the three, tremendous meat grinders. They would follow the typical procedure of yanking an inmate's skeleton out from his mouth, and dropping his flesh into the blood-covered mincers, but instead of being poured out into piles for the lunch ladies to fill up their cooking pots, the pipes of all three grinders were connected to a single tube that stretched horizontally straight for nearly a hundred feet, and then angled down to another automated hose above another conveyor belt. The ground meat was squirted at a rhythmic pace into individual soup cans, each marked with a white label that red in red-brown letters "LaVey's Canine Cuisine." The claws that pulled out the skeletons would drop the inanimate cadavers, one by one, down a man-sized chute, where they'd plummet two hundred feet below into the late Doctor's laboratory, landing safely on a white mattress.

Inside the lab, a guard would cradle the lifeless skeleton in his bony arms, and gently place him on his feet, into an empty, seven-foot-tall, glass case, similar to the ones for the Doctor's cloning or genetic splicing machines. A large, metal lever sat on the floor three feet to its left, with several black cords connected to the base of the tank. A simple pull downward to the right, and a flash of light-green, electric volts sparked up and down the corpse from skull to toe bone. This burst of life lasted for approximately three seconds before the skull started blinking its eye sockets, and giving a menacing grin. With initiation completed, his comrades would pull the lever to the opposite direction, causing the tank to levitate upward. He was then armed with a new AR-15 in his hands, and sent marching out the open garage door into the courtyard, where he proceeded to shoot down five inmates trying to climb the concrete wall, having absolutely no recollection of ever being an inmate himself in life.

Jailbot didn't forget about the ginger and black prisoners who were brutally murdered for their forbidden smoke and bathroom breaks. By the time he'd reached the quarry, the Dobermans had eaten virtually all of the ginger's flesh and organs, and many of his bones had been splintered and fractured into jagged shards of enamel, far too damaged to be reanimated into another guard. Despite this, Jailbot pulled out a claw arm holding an empty, dark-green, trash bag, and used his standard left and right claw arms to cherry-pick the bones that were still in tact. He did the same with the African-American prisoner outside the cafeteria, using a fourth arm to hose down any feces sitting on the bones before collecting them. With his sack now full, Jailbot flew through another garage door to the incinerator room, past the flaming boiler and heaps of coal, and into a one-thousand-square-foot chamber, where dozens of living prisoners were handcrafting more cages for future criminals to be incarcerated in, all rectangular or cube shaped, and in a variety of storage sizes. The inmates assembled their dead colleagues' bones together with trembling arms, wide eyes, and rainfalls of sweat. They never exactly had the sort of warm, fuzzy camaraderie that their former warden seemed to believe, but at the very least, they shared a passionate desire to stick it to "the man" whenever they had the chance. Now, they were united in how much they were scared shitless of "the man," and that if you resisted or screwed up even the slightest bit, you, too, could be turned into a cage for more crooks to be taken into this hellhole, and suffer the same fate, a sense of horror they hadn't felt since their last warden used to penetrate their dreams. It all felt like an endless catch-22 situation: refuse to work, and you'll undergo a painful death, but if you choose to work, you'll more than likely undergo a painful death anyway, and in neither circumstance would your passing ever be mourned.

One elderly, brunette prisoner had his eyelids stuck to his face with clear tape so that they would always remain open. As he fashioned some bars out of an inmates' spinal column, copious drips sweat and tears spouted from his head and face, his poor eyes aching for just one blink. "Don't stop working," he muttered to himself. "Don't stop working...they're always watching...never stop working..." Regrettably, in the midst of his frantic mumbling, the inmate's dehydrated eyeballs withered up, resembling a pair of white prunes, and floated down to the ground like autumn leaves.

Much to his chagrin, that inmate quickly discovered that his suspicions were perfectly justified. As soon as they had landed, his eyeballs, despite being dried out and detached, stretched upward in alarm. They happened to land at the proper angle to stare at a black security camera attached to the far-left corner of the earthy ceiling, about one hundred feet above the unsuspecting prisoners, just the right height to record a vast, distant overview of the whole chamber and all who were working inside. On the other end, Lord LaVey was watching the black-and-white footage from a gray TV monitor that had been lowered from the ceiling. He watched his prisoners' agony with a smile of sheer satisfaction, reclining the back of his dark-gray, leather, swivel chair against his mahogany desk, with both hands resting behind his head. "Splendid..."

The new warden was currently relishing his sweet success in his new office, which, of course, bore no resemblance to the one his son once worked in. The room had been stretched out to the size of a grand hall, the dark-brown, hardwood floors reaching out fifty feet long, and the light-gray, plastered ceilings looming seventy-five feet high. On both sides of the pine-green walls stood a row of five windows, standing sixty feet tall and spaced out twenty feet apart, each built with a lowercase-t-shaped frame across the glass panes, and a pair of black, velvet curtains drawn to its sides, revealing the frequent flashes of white light from the thunder and lightening outside. Three enormous, brass chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, spaced about fifteen feet apart from each other, emitting an eerie, dim light from their flickering, white candles. Another red carpet had been rolled down the vertical center. The back end lead to a pair of light-brown, wooden, double doors while the opposite end, roughly forty feet in front the doors, lead to LaVey's elegant, crotch desk, with a red-brown tabletop and thick legs around the kneehole, which served as the bases for two pairs of drawers for him to use. On the wall behind his chair, LaVey had hung the humongous, black-and-white portrait of himself that his son used to own, the one of him standing in the yard of his old prison with two guard dogs sitting to his left and right. Directly below the painting was a white-and-gray, marble mantel, and a black hearth containing a roaring fire. The intensity of the flames' light allowed for some daunting backlighting to be cast on its user when he was turned precisely in front of or behind it.

After a moment of admiring the security footage, LaVey moved his chair around to the front, and the TV rose back into its hatch within the ceiling. He gave an alluring smile to one of his coworkers standing on his right, gently fanning him with a four-foot-long palm leaf: an Alice no one in Superjail could've ever imagined. Every inch of her masculinity had disappeared, including her muscular structure and drooping genitalia. Her arms, legs, waist, and face were now incredibly lean, with very dainty hands and feet, as if she'd never punched or kicked anything in her life. In place of her guard uniform, she wore the scantily-clad, vintage attire of a American, Western "saloon gal:" a burlesque, strapless, corset dress with magenta breast plates, a light-pink waist lined with equally-pink lace, a black gown that draped the back of her legs but revealed the top of her knees, black fishnet stockings, black pumps, and a matching black feather standing erect from the left side of her ponytailed hair. The only tangible feature that remained unchanged was her magenta glasses resting on her silky-smooth cheeks and button nose.

"Isn't this wonderful, my dear Alice?" LaVey cooed. "No longer are either of us wallowing with those scumbags down below us. We have finally returned to our rightful places in this world, a world that once ran amok with chaos, and is now restored to its proper order."

"Whatever." Alice responded, her voice still as gruff and deep as it was with her old body.

LaVey switched his tone to that of effervescent enthusiasm, sounding more like an excited child than a ruthless tyrant (incredibly ironic, considering how much he despised his son for that exhibiting that same kind of behavior.) "And with so many wonders I've never seen before! Television, cell phones, computers, indoor plumbing! It's more than anyone in my time could've ever _imagined!"_

"Listen," Alice complained, "it's great that you love the future and all, but can I quit fanning you for a minute? My new skinny arms are getting tired as hell."

"Very well, Alice. Save your energy for your _real_ job..." LaVey gave her a lustful, toothy grin, and a trio of flying gloves, now with bat wings instead of feathered, unzipped their master's "barn door."

Alice stuck her tongue out in disgust, dropping her palm leaf, and taking several steps back from the desk. "UGH! No way, F wad! Making love to you is like giving my great-grandpa a full body massage!"

"Oh, come now, Alice." LaVey replied, gently grabbing his concubine by her right hand. "You know you can't resist me..."

"Get your old man hands offa me, you dick!"

Alice struggled to pull away from her boss's grasp, even punching him across his left cheek with her right fist, but alas, without her manly strength, it crumpled into a disjointed palm bearing a set of crooked, pulsing fingers. The minute her hand had struck his face, LaVey grabbed her wrist his right hand, leaning his snarling face closer toward hers. "I suggest you show a little more gratitude, Miss Alice, unless you need another painful reminder of _why _you should be grateful to me."

Keeping his eyes focused on Alice, another glove hovered five feet to Alice's left, holding a black whip and giving it a threatening lash into the air. Thankfully, before the sex-hungry brute could harm her any farther, they both turned their heads to the sound of the double doors creaking open. In the span of two seconds, the gloves flew away, and LaVey let go of Alice, zipped his pants back up, and straightened his top hat, trying to regain his composure. With a clearing of his throat, he responded in a calm, yet stern demeanor, holding both hands together. "Yes, who is it?"

The left door open an inch more, and there toddled a dizzy, disheveled, and disoriented Jared, waving his clipboard with his right hand. He glanced at LaVey with baggy, bloodshot eyes, and an uneven smile across his five o'clock shadow. His new uniform was completely unkempt, with an unbuttoned white blouse, a bow tie ready to fall off his neck, and one of the gray suspenders holding his black pants hanging loose off his right shoulder. "H-Hey-Hey there, boss!" He hiccuped. "Fine day isn't it?! Don't you worry, I'm-I'm here for ya!"

"Oh God." Alice groaned, slamming her palm against her forehead.

The two watched with dismay as Jared wobbled across the floor, making his serpentine way to LaVey, very frequently needing to stop himself from falling on his face, back, or sides. "H-Hang on a sec, boss! I'm-a comin'!"

LaVey gave Alice an unimpressed glare. "Don't tell me: the inmates were toying with him the wine cellars again?"

"Uhh, yeah. Poor guy. Shoved a whole beer keg down his throat for laughs." There was a hint of nervousness in the way Alice gave her answer, as if she wasn't telling him the full truth about the situation before them.

With a frustrated sigh, LaVey pulled out a black walkie talkie with his right hand. "Seems our prisoners still haven't learned their lesson." He pressed the button on its left side with his thumb. "Commander Humerus, it seems more prisoners have intoxicated my accountant again! Give them a more brutal firing round this time!"

The Commander, a skeleton guard wearing a navy-blue, military visor, nodded to his master's orders, and aimed his AR-15 at a group of five Caucasian inmates, holding or rolling large wooden barrels across the earthy floor. They froze in place as soon as they saw his finger bone on the trigger.

A brunette in his mid 20s was the first to make their case. "I swear, we didn't do nothin' to that guy!"

Without another word, the Commander filled the inmates bodies with bullets, and in the process, shot numerous holes through the barrels, causing red wine to pool onto the ground, and mix with the puddle of blood surrounding the criminals' carcasses.

Back in the office, Jared fell to his knees when he was ten feet in front of the desk. He squinted his eyes hard, but his vision was so blurry and distorted, his manager and coworker appeared to be a hundred feet from him, their images swaying back and forth despite the fact that they were standing still. "G-God, why do you guys hafta be so far away?"

With a tired, nauseated moan, Jared's red eyes rolled upward, almost to the back of his head, and he landed on his face with a loud PLOP!

LaVey growled in annoyance, clenching his fists tight and pounding them on the desktop. "How am I supposed to keep the prison's finances in check if my accountant keeps showing up to work roaring drunk?!"

Alice gently took the clipboard from Jared's hand, skimming through the attached paperwork. "Hmm...something about this gig making a shit ton of money, some blueprints for a..." The lens' of her glasses went wide at this particular document. "...hundred-foot-tall guillotine project?"

LaVey snatched them from her. "Give me that, Alice. Finances and paperwork are no place for a _woman._"

No sooner did LaVey utter that distasteful remark than Alice slammed her hands on the top of his desk, her glasses narrowing along with her eyebrows. "Listen, dick head! I didn't sign up for this gig so I could be your goddamn sex slave for the rest of my life, and just because I'm not a dude anymore doesn't mean I still can't kick your undead ass!"

Just as Alice was ready to throw another punch, two more skeleton guards appeared directly behind her in a puff of black smoke, blocking her with an X formed out of their grim reaper scythes.

LaVey stood up from his chair, his scowling voice intensifying as he instilled his dire warning into her heart. "Actually, my dear, that's _exactly_ what it means. You, literally and figuratively, do not have ballocks to face me, the man who gave you everything you ever wanted when you came groveling to my feet, begging to be treated like a _true _lady." He then smiled. "I would be happy to give you the status of a man in my faculty, but I highly doubt you'd be willing to pay the price."

A third skeleton poofed behind the motionless Jared, wrapping his left arm around his upper abdomen while his right hand pointed the tip of a dagger toward his oversized forehead.

Alice gasped. "Ok, ok, you can fuck me whenever you want! Just leave the little man out of this!"

LaVey's grin grew. "That's my girl."

With that, the skeletons lowered their weapons, and their master sat back down. "Now, go sober up your colleague and bring him back when he's regained his bearings, and if you try any 'funny business,' my guards and I will know."

"Got it."

Alice groaned and struggled a bit as she lifted Jared with her string bean arms, but after a few seconds, she was able to haul him over her right shoulder, and carry his midget body out of the room. When she turned around to face the door, she also revealed the seven, blood-red slash marks scarred in her shoulders and upper back.

As soon as they were gone, LaVey glanced up at the noise of a high-pitched chirping behind the double doors. The one on the left opened again, and Bird flew in toward the desk, lifting a shoe-box-sized, cardboard parcel by its intersecting strings with his beak. His light-yellow feathers had been colored black-gray, and he approached the new warden with a proud smile across his face.

LaVey smiled back, and gave his pet a gentle pat on the head as he rested on a silver, perch stand on his owner's desk. "Excellent work, Blackbird."

He excitedly snipped off the string with a pair of scissors, unwrapped the brown parchment, and opened up the box by its right flap. "This futuristic device should put that ungrateful slut in the mood..."

With both hands, he pulled out a baby-pink cock ring, which began to vibrate the minute it came out of its box.

-

Alice took the unconscious accountant into the private spa, the statues remodeled to resemble LaVey's face instead of his son's. She gently placed him down on the floor to fill the empty hot tub with a bulging sack of ice cubes, and used a green garden hose to pour in the water. Without even bothering to take his clothes off, Alice dunked Jared in when the tub was filled.

_"YAAAAHHH!"_

Jared's teal-blue body sprang right out of the water, and onto the floor in front of Alice's feet, shivering violently and wrapping his arms and legs close to his chest.

Nevertheless, a little hypothermia wouldn't stop Alice from speaking bluntly toward her freezing friend. "What the fuck, man?! You promised you weren't gonna crawl back into the bottle again! I can't keep covering your ass every time you get wasted on the job!"

Jared rubbed his hair, chest, arms, and back with a white towel, drying himself off, but he soon found himself getting wet again from the tears dripping down his face. "I know, I know, but how else can I live with myself?! I made a deal with the Devil and got the Warden killed! Now, a lot of innocent people and animals are being hurt, all because of _ME!_Why not save our new boss the trouble, and just kill me _now?!"_

Alice got down on one knee, softening her tone to one that was still stern, but also sympathetic. She wasn't about to sugarcoat the fact that Jared bore _some_ culpability for the current state of Superjail, but now wasn't the time to fan the flames of suicide burning inside her coworker. Whether she liked it or not, Alice needed Jared more than he realized. She turned her head to the left and right, making sure no one was around, and spoke to Jared in a whisper-quiet voice. "Listen. I hate this new gig, too, but as long as I'm stuck as a skinny, little, Barbie doll, I can't fend for myself. That bastard's gonna treat me like a damsel in distress no matter what I do, so I need you to stay sober for both of us. If you screw something else up, especially while you're drunk, we'll _both_ end up getting our asses kicked. The guy can only hear the same excuse so many times before he starts to suspect bullshit. We gotta hold out as long as we can if we're ever gonna find a way to take him down. You got it?"

Jared wiped his eyes with his left sleeve, and after a second of hesitation, he wrapped his arms around Alice's shoulders, leaving her rather surprised. "I'm so sorry, Alice." Jared sobbed. "I never wanted anything like this to happen to you..._or_ the Warden. I mean, he was driving me crazy, but I didn't think he was gonna lose his powers or anything. I thought he was just gonna step down, a-and that Superjail gonna make a meaningful contribution to society for once. Now, it is, but at the cost of the doing unspeakable things to you and the Warden in the process." He let out a despondent moan. "Why is it that every time I want some humanity and decency to work in this crazy world, I look like some sort of bad guy?!"

Touched by Jared's compassion, and truly devastated about how far she had fallen under LaVey's rule, Alice saw no point in locking up her pain from Jared anymore, especially since, at the moment, there were no guards or tyrannical moguls to shoot her down or rape her for making such a confession. Alice gave Jared a hug in return, letting herself cry on his shoulder. "It's not all your fault, Shorty. I fell for that asshole's smooth talk. I shoulda beat the crap out of him when I had the chance. Now I'm stuck letting him give me blow jobs and pack fudge 'til I die!"

Jared sniffled. "And now, Warden's gone, Jailbot's corrupted, the Twins are wanted fugitives...we can't even contact Ultraprison anymore. We're all we got left."

Alice and Jared continued hugging and crying as the storm outside them raged on. They'd been the only sane-minded, kind-hearted souls fortunate enough to survive this depressing hellhole thus far, and no matter how much time either of them had left, they would keep each other alive as long as possible.

-

The Twins' mugshots were being distributed throughout the entire prison on black-and-white flyers, labeled "WANTED" above the photo in black letters, and "DEAD OR ALIVE" beneath it, with the words "OR ALIVE" crossed out in black ink. Over a hundred of these flyers were taped onto the walls and doors of the jail's interior and exterior: the courtyard, the lunch room, the office hallways, the boiler rooms, even on the stalls in the Level C bathrooms. Currently, the two were hiding within the metal maze of air vents, shrunk down to the size of mice, staring glumly from an opening that revealed a scenic view of the prison's West Wing through a hallway window.

The left Twin began. "It is a tragedy what our favorite playground has been reduced to."

"And to make matters worse," the right added, "we bare much of the responsibility for its untimely demise."

Just then, the left Twin gasped and knocked his similitude to the ground. "Brother, watch out!"

WHAM! Had it not been for his sibling, one or both Twins would've surely been blasted to smithereens by the gigantic bullet that sailed over them. They swung their heads to their right to see another skeleton guard aiming his pistol just ten feet away! He fired a few more rounds at the tiny trespassers, but they teleported away before either of them could be hit.

They reappeared in their usual hideout inside Jailbot, surprisingly untouched since the AI's reprogramming.

The left sighed in relief. "Whew!"

"It seems we are home free." The right asserted.

Sadly for them, this wasn't the Jailbot they were accustomed to corrupting or living in. Shortly after acknowledging that they felt safe again, a blaring siren sounded off, and a multitude of red beacons appeared from the walls and ceilings of Jailbot's inner workings. The Twins' computer screen had turned the same shade of red, and was flashing white, 8-bit letters that read "INTRUDER ALERT." Jailbot's monitor promptly revealed his sneering, red eyes and mouth again, and retracted his robotic claw arms back into his chest. Once they'd reached the Twins' hideout, the claws followed the sounds of the Twins' tiny, yet audible, screams of panic, repeatedly snapping their pincers where they heard their terrified voices. After several seconds of dodging for dear life, the Twins held each other close, and teleported just as both claw arms were diving straight for them. In a rather startling upset, Jailbot's claws were so big that not only did they miss the Twins' escape, but they inadvertently smashed against some of his wiring and circuitry, like the keyboard that operated the internal computer. With loose cords sparking and a cloud of smoke rising from the crushed microchips, Jailbot let out a silent gasp, and plopped against his back on the ground, his systems completely offline.

In a flare of green light, the Twins reappeared in their usual sizes several hundred feet above the storm clouds, where the light-blue sky, smiling sun, and even an arching rainbow, were all being isolated from the earth below. The sides of the brick wall that had gone through the clouds were dripping melted globs of cements and mud from being so close to the sun. With another sigh, the Twins reclined on their own fluffy, white clouds, ready for a peaceful siesta in the friendly skies.

_BANG!_

Another bullet shot through the left Twin's cloud bed, popping it like a balloon and unleashing another shower of rain. At the very same time, it also sent its rider plummeting down back to Earth! "AAAHHHHH!"

His counterpart rose up from his cloud in alarm. "BROTHER!" And made a desperate dive after him the very instant he had fallen.

As the Twins tumbled out of the sky, more skeletons proceeded to shoot at them with their pistols and sniper rifles, riding on individual pegasi, and one riding on a skull-shaped, hot air balloon. The first Twin to fall had been clutching his right hip, wincing with pain as trickles of blood rose up in the air during his descent. His brother stroked his arms and legs in a frog-like fashion, trying to "swim" down toward his wounded companion. With his left hand sealing his wound closed, the Twin extended his right hand as far as he could, and the other Twin followed. With strained faces and tear-soaked eyes, the boys struggled with all their might to reach each other as they were arriving closer and closer to the Earth's surface. The barrage of bullets firing at them from above were miraculously missing every single shot, not harming the Twins any more than they already had. Before long, they were 100 feet above the ground, then fifty, and when they were precisely fifteen feet, they were finally able to grab hands, and teleport out of sight the millisecond they'd reached physical contact.

The airborne skeleton guards turned their heads every which way, having lost sight of their targets. They sat there dumbfounded for a second or two more until they remounted their pegasi, reloaded their weapons, and split up to resume their vigorous manhunt (or rather, alienhunt.)

While the guards were rushing off on land and air, their game had hidden inside one of the hollow, sheet metal roofs of the horizontal work sheds. There was no attic, and therefore no doors or windows for anyone else to enter the room. Unfortunately, it was very, _very_ difficult to stay quiet for long when you've been inflicted with a bullet wound, and even harder to stay unseen when the wound was soaking your clothes with blood, and would soon be dripping onto the floor.

The left Twin took quiet, grunting breaths, trying as hard as possible not to let his pain give himself away. The right wrapped one arm around his shoulder in concern, speaking in anxious whispers. "We do not have the necessary stamina to teleport any farther than this. We must get you proper medical attention if we are ever to escape."

The right Twin spoke between breaths. "The only physician...in this place...has long been deceased, brother."

"Perhaps if we contact Father-"

At that, the injured Twin grabbed his counterpart by his collar, pressing his glaring against his of fright, making sure to keep his angry voice hushed. "I would rather DIE than go back to that accursed life as our homeland's overlords! Do you hear me?!"

The right gently removed his brother's fists from his tunic. "All right, all right! At any rate, we must seek asylum somewhere, or you surely_will _perish."

The right Twin arched down, peeking his left eye through a tiny hole on the floor. This shed, which served as an assembly line for inmate-crafted car parts, seemed rather vacant, not a single soul, dead or undead, to be seen. With that factor established, the young spacenoids shrunk themselves again, this time to the size of ants, apparently not needing as much stamina for shrinking as they would need for powers like teleportation. The Twin hoisted his injured brother on his back, and began his attempt to climb down the open hole.

-

Within the outlands beyond Superjail, the ghostly woman had finished searching through a tribal village of hen houses, where man-sized chickens, roosters, and baby chicks, dressed in Aztec garb and armed with spears, placed a live cow on their stone, sacrificial altar, clucking to the heavens and raising their weapons in the air. The disheartened specter had gone roughly fifty feet south, wondering if she was truly on the right lead to finding the Warden, when she noticed another pegasus carriage flying two-hundred-feet over her. As soon as they'd sailed past the chicken tribe, the clouds reappeared before them, taking the shape of LaVey's angry face.

The female phantom gasped, recognizing that face of evil and its significance to finding his son. She waited until the heads of the two pegasi were entering the white light inside LaVey's mouth before rushing up behind the chariot, keeping her head and body down low so that neither the horses nor criminals couldn't see her. In hardly anytime at all, she was staring at the far-off sight of the towering brick wall sealing off the Planetary Prison, standing at the very same tip of the volcano that his son's jail once stood.

The pegasi rose their chariot at a higher altitude, toward the aerial runaway several hundred feet ahead of their ghostly hitchhiker. With them gone, she was in the clear, allowing her to float cautiously to the wall, frequently glancing around for potential followers or watchdogs (human or canine.) By the time she'd reached the colossal barricade, which was made up of over a million standard-sized bricks, she gently stroked her hands against them, checking for stability. After a minute, she placed her right hand through the wall, and then the rest of her head, torso, and limbs. The bricks and cement were thick enough for her spiritual body to hide _inside_ them, between the prison exterior and the ocean and skies outside, with only her glowing eyes and nose sticking out from brick surface.

From where she stood, the ghostly woman could see an ample overview of whole jail, the buildings and inmates looking like dolls scurrying in and out of toy structures. The mere sight of this place gave her the same somber, foreboding aura that the inmates were experiencing firsthand down below. It hardly took her long to identify LaVey's quarters. It was not only the tallest tower among the others in this prison, standing at a whopping three-thousand feet high, but it was the only one with windows, walls, and a roof formed in the shape of LaVey's face and top hat, similar to how his son had designed his own living space. Still under cover of bricks, the lady ghost darted to her left, arching past the West Wing, and reaching the Northern borders, only twenty feet behind LaVey's tower. Rather than taking any chances with making herself visible from switching between walls, she dropped herself down to the bottom of the brick wall, still hiding inside them, and was soon directly beneath the exterior grounds, floating through the masses of dark-brown dirt without forming any lumps or mounds aboveground. As she made her way forward, she continuously placed her palms and fingertips against the earthy ceiling above her, careful not to let them stuck out. A minute or two later, she sensed her fingers touch a different surface: ceramic tiles, materials not typically used for outdoors. She reached her hands a bit farther back, directly over her head. She could arch her fingers around the surface of drywall; it seemed thick enough for her to hide into. With a hard bite on her lower lip, the ghost woman cautiously levitated upward, and, in a stroke of good fortune, found herself exactly twenty feet in front of the brick wall she had been hiding; inside the tower of Lord LaVey's living and working quarters.

Naturally, the top floor was the first place she'd suspect his bedroom or office to be, wherever he lingered the most to oversee his empire. She made her way up the drywalls, her spirit going directly through the pipes, plumbing, and air vents, while making sure to avoid going through any windows, lest she reveal herself through the clear, glass panes. She also kept her face and eyes hidden to decrease the likelihood of being spotted, relying only on her gut feeling to simply fly north to reach the highest level of the tower.

After a few minutes of blindly soaring straight up, she stopped herself when she noticed that she had gone through the roof, ducking her head back down before she could be seen. She was now inside the "top hat" portion of LaVey's tower, but the area around her was not an office or bedroom at all. It was a bare, beige room that stored a set of one hundred gray, security monitors, stacked on top of each other in five rows of twenty TVs, lit only by a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, and the light emitting from footage playing on the screens. There was a small, bronze label placed under each TV's screen, reading the location of its connected camera in black letters: "Courtyard," "East Cells," "Cafeteria," "Kitchen," "West Sewers," and too many others to list. The bottom row of TVs rested on a ten-foot-long, tan, metal desk, with black remote control, and a single, navy-blue, swivel chair that was currently unoccupied. The only means of entering or exiting the room (for the living, anyway) was a hatch door on the opposite end of the room, as seen for spaces like attics or cellars. The door had been left wide open, revealing a small ladder with which whoever worked in this area would to return to his post, no doubt another one of LaVey's undead minions. It was very unlikely that this woman would be harmed in any way; she'd been good and dead for decades now, and how could a ghost possibly decease any farther? However, should her cover be compromised, her dogged pursuit for the Warden would be all for naught.

As her eyes scanned the mass of monitors, her trance was interrupted by the mechanical whirring of a black, duct tube lowering itself down from the ceiling, and curving into an angle toward the back of one of the TVs, the third monitor on the left of the top row, which was playing the footage of the guards patrolling the stormy skies. Another hatch on the floor slid itself open three feet behind the stack of TVs, where the tube would lower the attached monitor into the room directly underneath: LaVey's office. The ghost woman let out a quiet gasp when she saw the infuriated prison tycoon watching the TV, and yelling through his walkie talkie, his face turning a burning red. "I DON'T CARE IF YOU HAVE TO SEND THE WHOLE ARMADA AFTER THEM! I WANT THOSE TWINS' HEADS ROLLING ON MY DOORSTEP!_UNDERSTAND?!"_

The lady ghost covered her mouth with her right hand in alarm. Whoever these "Twins" were, she hoped they would escape from the wrath of this merciless monster.

Leaving LaVey to his tirade, the ghost woman resumed scanning the security TVs. All of a sudden, something caught her wary, green eye. On the 57th monitor, labeled "MEAT SILO" below the screen, the Warden's motionless body had just been tossed on top of a pile of dead inmates, in a dark, condensed, metallic vessel of some kind. The position of the camera allowed for a closeup Warden's upper half. From how he appeared on tape, he was still in his signature attire, with only his hat and cane missing, and he lay deathly still on his chest with his head resting on its right side, and his arms bent forward in front of his face.

The ghost woman gazed at the video with absolute heartache, slowly shaking her head. Was she too late? Had his father truly sealed his son's fate? No! She wouldn't believe it! She'd come too far, and worked too hard to surrender her mission now! Not sparing another moment, she raced back down the walls as fast as her transparent body could carry her.

At the exact same time, where the colorless, seemingly-lifeless Warden lay, another hatch door rose open, leaving a four-square-foot opening at the bottom of the steel silo. The mound of inmates inside began to sink as the corpses on the bottom slid through the door, and down a steel ramp leading outside.

Wasting no time, the ghost woman circled through the aerial view of the prison, hiding back inside the brick wall, scanning for any structure that bore any resemblance to a silo. After a minute of frantic searching, she noticed an isolated, dirt field in the Northeastern sector, about ten-thousand square feet, and bordered with a ten-foot-high, metal fence, topped with swirls of barbed wire. Scattered within that field were a row of five, white, triple-barred, jumping hurtles, a double-sided, metal ramp, and a pair of gray, concrete cylinders, all with fifteen, brown Dobermans running, jumping, or crawling across them. To the left of the fence was a dark-gray, metal shed, standing twelve feet high and sixty feet long, with an angled, black roof shading the dirt porch, covering the entire left horizontal side of the fence. To the vertical left and right sides of the sheds were two, towering, iron silos, the left labeled "WATER" in light-blue letters, and the right marked with "MEAT" in red. With another silent gasp, the ghost lady shot herself down the wall in a streak of green light.

At last, the Warden slid out of the silo, and out to where the rest of the "meat" was being sent: directly underneath the shaded porch. The ends of their fence connected to the concrete doorway to the porch, leaving nothing standing between the dogs' playground and their dining room. To make the situation even more dire, the Warden happened to land at the very center of the floor, where the dogs could see his whole body lying before them. The sight of all that juicy meat, even the achromatic flesh sack, sent the Dobermans salivating and barking with savage hunger. The carnivorous canines bounded forward, ready to dive right into their human banquet, but when they were a foot away from chowing down, the ghost woman burst up from beneath the floor, shielding the Warden with her arms and torso, and giving the dogs a snarl as menacing and threatening as the ones they were giving their soon-to-be-victims.

The Dobermans were startled by this spirit's presence at first, but almost immediately after her arrival, they regained the nerve to charge at her. With all her might, the lady uppercut the nearest dog by his jaw with her right fist, causing him to turn his back on her, lying on his chest. She then grabbed another by his legs with both hands, and swung his head and torso like a baseball bat to send four more dogs flying against the left and right walls, including the one she'd just socked in the face. The impact of her strikes caused them all to have their skulls smashed in, blood splattering on the walls from where their craniums had crashed. The dog she'd hit them with was lying in daze, his pupils spinning around his eyeballs. Another dog was racing toward her with rabid fury, but while he was in midair, ready to pounce on her undead soul, the lady ghost tossed the her doggie baseball bat aside, and leaped right into her attacker's mouth and slid down his throat, possessing him just as LaVey had done to Paul. With his body and mind now under her control, she made a dash for another dog charging at her, and used her new set of knifelike teeth to chomp his neck off his torso, leaving him in a decapitated, blood-soaked heap on the ground. She then used her jaws to bite around the entire top of another dog's head, using her mouth to throw him over her shoulder, across the room. Two more dogs sprinted to her from behind, but she bucked her hind legs against their faces, their closed eyelids spewing out blood from the pin-prick claws on her toes. For the last dog bolting in front of her, she had her dog body stand up on two legs, and grab his back by her paws as if they were human hands. She rose him up over her head, and gave him a hearty throw, smashing his face against the ceiling, and abruptly landing back on it when he hit the ground. The vicious guard dogs were now as about as murderous and primed to attack as roadkill.

With all the Dobermans deceased, the lady ghost rose out from her canine body, leaving it unconscious from spiritual possession (not to mention the potential exhaustion from the major ass-whooping that had just taken place.) She redirected her attention to the Warden, still lying motionless but not the least bit harmed from the hungry dogs. Staring at him with longing eyes, she gently caressed his head with her left hand, and his neck with her right, and snuggled face close to his, a tear streaming down her face. Suddenly, her eyes shot open. She lowered the Warden's head, and placed her right hand over his heart. Her eyes and jaw widened even farther; even after undergoing such a gruesome ordeal from his father, could the Warden possibly still be alive? She could sense a soul in there somewhere, having had plenty of experience with dying herself. Perhaps she wasn't too late after all.

Before she had time to contemplate this farther, a door on the right wall opened, casting a rectangular light over the ghost lady and the Warden, and within that light was Gary's looming shadow. He had opened the door, holding an enormous sack labeled "Kibble," but one look at the mangled dogs made him raise his eyebrows and drop his bag with shock. The ghost held the Warden closer, gazing up at Gary with a face begging for mercy. After a moment of staring, Gary shifted his head both ways, checking to see if no one else was nearby, and beckoned her to come inside the narrow corridor he was standing in, repeatedly curling the fingers of his right hand back toward his palm. With some apprehension, the ghost woman followed Gary inside, carrying Warden's limp body with her. There were two doors standing apart from each other in the hallway. Gary opened the one on his right, which looked like some sort of storage closet. It was about the size of a single, college dorm room, with six, three-tiered, metal shelves standing in an evenly-spaced, horizontal row across the tan, carpeted floor. The shelves themselves were holding all sorts of equipment used for the dogs: five-gallon water jugs, spare leashes, food and water bowls, chew ropes and rubber balls, even whelping boxes for puppies. It wasn't the most ideal place to hide, but just about anywhere was better than being where she and the Warden would likely be caught. With a smile of gratitude, the ghost carried the Warden inside. Once behind the door, Gary covered his right pointer finger over his mouth, gesturing her to be quiet. He then carefully closed the door, and turned his head back out the doorway to the outdoor porch. On the top left corner of the ceiling was another security camera, its red light still glowing. Without a hint of fear or hesitation, Gary took several steps back from the lens so that all of his body could be shown from the camera's current angle. When he got in his desired position, he stuck his middle finger out against the lens, giving it an extreme closeup, and immediately after, he grabbed the camera with both hands, and yanked it off the wall, the wires ripping off its attachment. The minute the camera was offline, so was the TV recording him.


	6. Isabelle, Part I

**Chapter 6: Isabelle, Part I**

The prison's sex slave and hung over accountant were finishing up a silent lunch break in the cafeteria, with Alice eating a tuna fish sandwich while Jared slurped on a Chub Shake, when they had the unexpected misfortune of hearing their boss's booming voice through the intercom, and while off-duty, no less.

"ALICE, JARED, GET IN HERE THIS INSTANT!"

The startling noise caused Alice swallow her food down the wrong tube, and Jared to splutter out his mouthful of chocolate milk and ice cream, barely missing his coworker.

The two stood before LaVey's desk like soldiers standing at attention.

"There's been a breach of security here in _my_ prison!"

LaVey revealed the "DOG EATERY" monitor hanging from the ceiling, which was now playing nothing but white noise and black-and-white static. "Something or someone has tampered with the security camera down in the dog kennels! I want you both to go down there, and bring me the culprit at once!"

Alice's sarcasm was so thick, one could cut it with a knife. "Oh no, sir! Don't make me go there! I'm too weak and helpless to fight against those mean, _male_ guard dogs!"

LaVey lowered his eyelids, rather unimpressed. "Would you prefer to stay here and sleep with me?"

At that, the sarcasm immediately ceased. "NO!"

"Then humor me. Show me that you can do a better job at securing this place than my undead prison guards, seeing as they've obviously failed me on one of their most basic tasks."

"W-We'll get right on it, sir!" Jared answered timidly, following Alice out the door with haste.

The ghost lady cradled the Warden in her arms, underneath the spotlight of a single bulb dangling from the closet ceiling. She used her right fingers to gently stroke strands of his hair away from his forehead, staring longingly at his seemingly-lifeless face. Much to her surprise, her cover was compromised again, much sooner than she had expected.

The closet door swung open, revealing Alice and Jared, looking rather surprised themselves.

"AAHHH! ANOTHER GHOST!" Jared shrieked.

The ghostly woman turned her whole body around, still carrying the Warden. "No, please! I don't mean anyone any harm!"

Jared gasped, kneeling beside his ex-employer. "WARDEN! Where did you find him?!"

The ghost lady bit her lower lip. Surely, these employees would put both her and the Warden in custody if they found out she slaughtered all those dogs. "I-I found him outside. I had to rescue him, or he would've been dead by now."

Alice pointed her right finger. "Wait, did _you_ just beat the crap out of those dogs?"

The ghost held the Warden's head closer to chest. "Please understand. I only did it so that they wouldn't eat my son!"

"...Sweet." Alice smirked.

Jared raised an eyebrow. "Wait a minute? Your _son? _Th-that mean's you're his..." His eyes and jaw gaped at this alarming realization.

The ghost nodded, finishing his sentence for him. "Yes. I've been searching for him for over a hundred years, and now I think he's just barely alive, but he could be dying, so I need to get him some medical help right away. Please, I beg of you, don't tell anybody else we're here. My son is all I have left; if I lose him, I'll lose_everything!"_

Jared took a pause. He wasn't 100% certain that this lady truly was the Warden's mother, but already they bore some resemblance in the way they uttered the exact same words when they were on the verge of losing what they'd cherished the most.

"All right, miss." Jared answered. "We won't tell anybody else you're here, especially not his father, o-our boss. Right, Alice?"

"Yeah," Alice added. "That dick can go screw himself for once."

The ghost woman smiled. "Oh, thank you."

Just then, another familiar voice chimed in. "We are in need of some urgent care as well."

The ant-sized Twins crawled out from underneath the bottom shelf against the left wall, with one carrying his wounded brother in his arms. The minute they were out, they returned to their regular sizes.

Alice and Jared both gasped.

"You two!" Jared pointed.

The able-bodied Twin gave a face that matched the immense desperation in his voice. "Wait! I must beg of you as well: please, do _not_ make off with our heads! My brother has been severely injured, and if he is not healed soon, he, too, shall die!"

Alice waved her arms in front of her face. "All right, all right! We can help all of you guys, but we gotta do it in the only place where nobody else can hear us."

In hardly any time at all, Alice was pushing open a brown, metal door to a small room that was covered in rows of black, foam padding on every inch of the walls, ceiling, and floor. Like the storage closet, the only source of light was a single bulb dangling from a cord on the ceiling, stuck firmly between two, flat squares of padding.

"The Dogs' Delivery Room?" Jared queried.

"Yep." Alice responded, gently knocking the soft walls with her right knuckles. "It's the only room in the whole place that's completely sound-proof. The boss loves his bitches, but not the sounds of them giving birth."

The Warden's mother lay her son down on his back while the Twin's injured sibling sat down against the right wall, cringing and holding onto his wound with pain.

Alice slipped on a pair of green, latex gloves, and her white, nurse cap. "All right, let's see what the damage is."

While Alice worked on the afflicted alien, Jared stood beside the Warden and his undead mother.

"I can't tell what's wrong with him," she said with worry. "I think he's still alive, but I don't know why he's all gray like this."

"He _did_ lose pretty much all his body fluids when he, erm..._upchucked_ his supernatural powers. I'll go get some water."

As Jared dashed out of the room, Mama Warden glanced back at her son. "Wait...supernatural _powers?"_

Alice turned her head over her shoulder, responding to her guest's question while using a pair of pliers to twist the bullet out from the Twin's wounded hip, ignoring his yelps of pain with each turn of her wrist. "Yeah. Whoever becomes the new warden in this place gets all kinds of magical powers like they were some sorta god. Your son did all sorts of crazy shit like that before his dad's ghost came in and took over."

Warden's mom turned back to her child, covering her lips with her left hand. She already learned from the conversation with his father back at the graveyard that Warden had killed a lot of inmates to try to live up to his legacy, but she couldn't bare to imagine what kind of havoc a tortured soul like his might've wreaked having the authority and celestial talents of a deity.

"He was a total nutcase," Alice continued. "Killed pretty much whoever he wanted just so he could get his way."

With a slight tug of the pliers, Alice removed the bullet from the Twin's hip. His brother began covering the wound with strips of white, bandage tape, before he could lose anymore blood than he'd already spilled.

Warden's mother spoke back to Alice in a tone that was firm, yet rational, making her case without sounding dismissive of the deaths of hundreds of prisoners. "I'm not going to make any excuses for what my son has done wrong, especially something as serious as murder, but I think if I can at least reach out to him, it'd be the first step in a very long, yet much-needed journey to finally recovering from his father's abuse."

At that instant, Jared rushed back in the room, holding a plastic, bottled water. "I found some fresh water."

The able-bodied Twin snapped his right fingers. "I believe we also have something that will help revive the former warden."

He reached into his left pocket, and pulled out what looked like a soft drink: a six-inch, neon royal blue can, labeled with hot pink stickers of diamond-shaped stars, stretched and shrunk into polarizing sizes so that they appeared to be twinkling. "This caffeinated, ginseng beverage contains electrolytes and vitamins that should assist in rejuvenating his body."

With utmost care, Jared lifted the Warden's head with his right hand, and slowly poured half the liquid down his white-gray throat. Once the Warden had swallowed it, the Twin knelt beside Jared, and gave him about a third of his alien energy drink. Everyone, including Alice and the remaining Twin, waited anxiously for any response, and after a few seconds, his face began to stir, letting out weak, quiet groans and breaths as his eyes opened underneath his glasses.

"Ngh, ungh...wh-wha...?"

His mother's face lit up, her smile beaming and more tears brimming in her undead eyes. Jared smiled along with her, and the Twins grinned in contentment. Alice remained indifferent, neither elated nor bummed.

The Warden squinted hard, his blurred vision slowly adjusting. "J-Jared?"

He then spotted the smiling face of the ghost still cradling him. "Hi, sweetheart."

The Warden's eyes and glasses went wide. Ordinarily, he would be rather unnerved by the idea of waking up to see a complete stranger holding him in their arms, but with _this_ stranger's fair beauty and grace, he felt rather comforted to find someone like her with him as opposed to someone who'd seem more likely to harm him. "Who are _you?_ Are you some kind of angel?"

She giggled. "You _could_ say that. You don't know me, but I've been watching over you since the day you were born."

An erotic smile grew across the Warden's gray face. "Hmmm...I may not have Superjail anymore, but at least I've been rescued by a ravishing angel."

The Warden kissed her right hand several times, and continued up her forearm. Of course, the angelic ghost wasn't attracted to him in that same context, but she gave a rather sheepish chuckle, half-amused by his naivete and half-disturbed by how quick he was to try to hit on her.

Jared broke the ice before things could get any more awkward. "Uh, sir, this woman claims to be your _mother."_

The Warden's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and his puckered lips froze in place. His mother responded with a rather sheepish grin as a polite way of telling her son how inappropriate this kind of behavior was.

_"AAAHHHH!"_

Warden scrambled away from his mother's arms, and into the left corner of the room, leaning his back against the padded walls and pointing at her with a trembling, right arm.

"ALICE, SAVE ME FROM THIS WRETCHED-_YAAHH!"_

As if the situation couldn't get any more surreal, the Warden was left in shock to see his old guard looking so lean and feminine. "MY GOD, WHAT_HAPPENED_ TO YOU?!"

"It's a long and unpleasant story that I really don't wanna go into right now." Alice answered, rather nonchalantly.

Jared carefully approached the frightened Warden, trying not to startle him any farther. "Sir, what's wrong? Why are you so scared of your own mother?"

Warden knelt down behind Jared's body, using his torso and oversized head as a human shield. "Don't let that goodie-two-shoes, angel look fool you, Jared!"

He then pointed toward his mother's alarmed face. "I know all about you! Papa told me you were an ungrateful slut that-"

"Dumped you on his doorstep so that I wouldn't have to take care of you?"

Warden lowered his arm, now feeling rather faint from astonishment. "...Oh my God...those were his _exact _words! H-How did you know?!"

Warden's mother let out a sad sigh through her nose. "It was the only time he ever spoke to you about me."

As the Warden's mother explained that vivid memory, a fluffy thought cloud rose over her head, visually depicting what she was describing verbally. "One day, when you were five years old, you asked him out of sheer curiosity whether or not you had a mommy. Your father said you did, but he threw all kinds of insults at me. He called me a skank, a slut, a bitch, and far too many other names for a boy your age to hear at the time, and when he was done, he said that if you ever bothered him about your mother again, he'd take away all your brick toys for a month."

The thought cloud dissipated in the air, and the Warden was left gawking at his mother with dropped jaws. Jared and the others were listening intensely as well, exchanging sympathetic frowns from hearing such a sad story. Little did they realize, the worst was yet to come.

"Like I said, I've been watching over you since the day you were born." A twinge of anger began to fester in her voice. "I never abandoned you; your father _murdered_ me."

Warden and the others gasped._"Murdered?!"_ Jared quivered, holding his hands around his neck.

Warden's mother nodded. "Yes. My physical deformities have been removed since I arrived to the gates of Heaven, but when I was killed..." She turned around, and pulled down the top half of her dress, revealing her bare back. "I had a deep gash on this spot right here, over where my heart was." She wrapped her right arm over her left shoulder, pointing her finger at the approximate area where her heart would be.

"So the guy literally and metaphorically stabbed you in the back?" Alice queried.

Warden's mother slipped her dress back on, and turned around. "Yes." She then stared glumly at the ground, holding her hands together. "I will admit, I _was_ a slut before I met your father, Warden, but by little means did he change my life for the better."

Warden raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

"I used to be a saloon gal, singing and dancing on stage in front of all-male audiences."

_In her mind, the Warden's mother could envision herself in her prime; a ravishing, burlesque dancer, swaying and shimmying to the lively, honky-tonk tunes of the saloon pianist. She showed off her lean, silk-smooth body with pride, what little wasn't covered under her scantily-clad,__turquoise, corset dress. She frequently flashed her black, frilled skirt to certain highlights of the song, revealing the black lingerie hidden between her fishnet-stocking legs. She also shook her hourglass hips from side-to-side, causing the breasts underneath their turquoise plates to wiggle to the rhythm. The girl was an absolute gem in the eyes of her audience of young-adult and middle-aged cowboys, rooting and wolf-whistling while waving their pints of beer and bottles of whisky from their restaurant and bar seats._

Among the crowd of drunken rapscallions was Lord LaVey, dressed in his signature attire, sipping a glass of red wine as he watched this young woman from the front end of the bar stand. At one point, he noticed her turning around and bending over, flashing her clothed buttocks in front of the crowd. At this, he gave a rather sensual grin, finding himself thirsty for more than just his expensive bottle of wine.

_"I could tell that your father, Lucifer LaVey, was incredibly wealthy, judging by how he dressed..."_

_By the end of her dance, the men were tossing gold coins at her feet as she took several gracious bows before her cheering public. In the midst of this shower of chump change, LaVey reached into his left pocket, and gave a perfect, underhanded throw to a tiny, brown sack carrying twenty gold coins. The lady gasped to see this little bonus land right at her toes, and graciously picked it up from the stage, giving its thrower a glowing smile._

_"...And how heavily he had tipped me that night."_

_Shortly after the show, the two were inside the young lady's dressing room, sitting on a red, velvet sofa, cuddling and French Kissing to their hearts' content. As the eroticism intensified, she untied the laces holding her corset in place, revealing her naked top while still keeping her eyes closed and her lips onto her lover's mouth. LaVey followed, revealing his bulky, hairy chest and arms. _

_"I wanted the money. We both wanted the sexual pleasure. It seemed like a perfect match at the time."_

_By then, the arousal had reached its highest peak. The woman let herself fall back on the sofa so that LaVey could stretch himself on top of her, and they both threw their pants and skirt in the air, heaving even louder with pleasure. _

_"But then, a week or so later, I found out that I was pregnant."_

_The lady was now seated in a wooden chair in a white room, anxiously watching the doctor, a middle-aged brunette with a curled mustache, gently placing the end of his stethoscope over various areas of her lean, naked abdomen. After a moment, she rolled her white, short-sleeved blouse back over her torso, and the doctor gave his patient a solemn nod. Horrified by this daunting news, she covered her lips with both hands, her eyes staring off into space._

_"I never told anyone who the father was at the time because I believed that would've been putting blame on him for a situation that_ I_had brought upon myself. I refused to control my selfish urges, and now, my sex life was over, and my reputation was ruined."_

_Overwhelmed with shame, the guilt-riddled concubine sat in complete silence, hanging her head low as her manager, a bald, middle-aged man in a gray tux, yelled and berated his employee at his office desk._

_"The owner of the saloon didn't take kindly to the fact that I'd slept with one of his customers, and becoming an expectant mother out of wedlock made it even worse, so, understandably, he fired me."_

_He topped off his tirade with an angry point to the door behind her with his right hand._

_Brushing the tears out of her eyes, the Warden's mother-to-be glanced around the other vendors and shops in the bustling, Western town: the Blacksmith, the General Store, a shop for selling and repairing carriages and wagons, all owned and operated by white men, young and old._

_"Since I was the only female in the entire town, it was even harder to find other work for me. In those days, girls were so hard to come by that men really wanted them for either sex, marriage, or companionship."_

_The minute she stepped through the swinging doors of the General Store, every single customer swung their heads in her direction, popping out their eyes and tongues just looking at her. _

_The store manager, a middle-aged ginger with a white apron, zipped up to her and hooked his right arm around her left, smiling and curling his mustache in a rather seductive manner. Her enlarged breasts were certainly a sight to see, but his smile faded when he noticed the bare minimum baby bump protruding from the torso of her blouse._

_"And, as you can imagine, it wasn't very attractive to make love to a pregnant woman."_

_Cringing with the sexual disenchantment, the manager shook his head, and trudged off in depression, as did the turned-off customers._

_"With no one else to turn to, I resorted to the last means in town of providing a safe haven for both of us."_

_By nightfall, a horse-drawn carriage was dropping the young lady off at the marble steps of a stately, white, Victorian manor house, isolated about six miles west of the town's prison. Without hesitation, she slammed one of the brass knockers on the white, double doors, as loudly as her dainty hands would allow. His butler, a middle-aged Caucasian Brit with dark-brown sideburns, was rather surprised to see her at the door, but nonetheless, he brought his master to her at once. _

_"Of course, I had to tell him that he was indeed the father of the child I was carrying, since he was the first and last man I'd ever slept with upon the time of my pregnancy."_

_Naturally, Lucifer was stunned to hear that he had accidentally impregnated an unmarried woman he'd only just met. After a few moments of standing there, his bewilderment slowly transformed into a dignified smile._

_"But rather than resenting me like the other men would've done, he was extremely _proud_of the idea of having a baby! He said that this child would 'be a shining example for my legacy as a man of criminal justice,' and that 'together, we can raise an heir that would make any other parent envious.'"_

_The woman's face lit up with optimism hearing this man's glowing rhetoric. With a passionate smile, Lucifer finished his speech by dropping down on one knee, gently holding up her left hand, and slipping a diamond ring on her finger._

_"So, that night, we decided to marry."_

_Before she knew it, a melody of church bells was ringing across town, and the Victorian bride and groom were stepping out of the double doors of a white church._

_"But it wasn't long before I noticed something off about our relationship."_

Lady LaVey, dressed in a magenta, Victorian, maternity gown, and a matching sunhat,

_sat on a cranberry-red armchair in the living room parlor, knitting white, wool baby booties in front of a marble mantel, and the numerous deer, caribou, and stuffed bird hunting trophies resting on the wall above. To the right of the fireplace, standing near one of the windows was a living, white dove, sitting in a black, bird cage, resting on a straw nest it had fashioned underneath the perch bar._

"Most of the time, I was left home alone while your father busied himself with his job."

Just then, Lady LaVey

_lifted her head up to a strange, crackling sound coming from the left corner of the room. A beige egg had hatched inside the dove's nest, revealing a tiny, white chick chirping its first cries of life. The proud mother greeted her newborn with gentle cooing, snuggling around its tiny beak. The sight of it made the pregnant human shed sentimental tears._

"For a while, I gave him the benefit of the doubt; a woman in my condition had no business going to such a dangerous environment as a prison. But then I noticed how controlling he was at home, too."

_Some weeks later, Lucifer was overseeing the development of the new nursery in his mansion, supervising the furniture movers, painters, and carpenters with the strictest attention to detail, from the color of the walls to where the bassinet would be placed, to even where the portrait of his daddy would be hung on the wall. Lady LaVey, now well into her third trimester, noticed her husband organizing the baby's room, and graciously stepped in to offer her input as well. She'd hardly uttered a single sentence before Lucifer silenced her, shaking his head and pointing toward the door._

_"He wouldn't let me make any decisions about how our child would be raised. I felt like my only role was to conceive it, and nothing more."_

Discouraged, the Lady trudged back to the living room, and sat on the red sofa again, gently stroking her right hand over her swollen belly. She glanced at the dove's cage, and noticed that the chick had matured enough to be able to fly, hovering in front of its mother, and flapping its tiny wings. Both the mother and baby dove chirped with pride. It was a shame that their cell did not allow for adequate room for the baby bird to strengthen its wings. Her downtrodden heart somewhat lifted by this uplifting sight, Lady LaVey promptly approached the dove family, pushed the window hatch open, and unhooked the latch of the cage door, allowing the dove and her child to take off like a shot, soaring across the baby-blue, desert skies.

"I realized that my role in the family was being diminished...and when I finally got the chance to visit his workplace, where he planned to have our child work when he or she grew up..."

_One blustery, winter afternoon, with a flurry of snow frosting the desert sands, Lady LaVey watched with horror the brutality occurring right outside Lucifer's office. From one of his windows, she could see quite a bit of the punishments some of the prisoners were facing: a Caucasian chain gang being whipped into mining rocks in a quarry; a black man being hung from a noose; a middle-aged Caucasian being decapitated with a guillotine. _

_"I saw your father's true nature being revealed to me: a ruthless monster who saw corruption and inferiority in everyone except himself. While I couldn't be certain if the prisoners deserved their punishments or not, I also watched him execute a mother dog, who he had deemed 'useless' to him after she had miscarried a litter of pups."_

Indeed, just to the right of the Doberman kennels, a prison guard was placing all five, stillborn, Doberman puppies into a wicker basket, while another used an enormous axe to slice the mother's torso in half on the ground, further filling up the puddle of blood that had already formed from the miscarriage. As the blade sliced her carcass open, Lady LaVey covered her mouth with her right hand, and placed her left protectively around her womb. She knew her child wasn't about to be sliced in half like that poor Doberman, but she couldn't help but put herself into her perspective as a mother.

"This was the kind of person he wanted his child to become, and I was

not_going to stand for it."_

Lady LaVey stood at her husband's work desk, bursting into a furious rant with tears streaming down her scowling face. Much to his chagrin, Jarum happened to be standing right next to his boss when she had come in, his eyes widening at the intensity of a situation that felt rather awkward to him.

"I told him I would never allow our baby to grow up into a heartless beast like his or her father, and that I would use every ounce of strength I had to keep this child away from him."

With that, she stormed out, slamming his office door hard enough to cause one of his framed diplomas to fall off its hook on the wall, the glass shattering to pieces as it hit the wooden floor. For a moment, Lucifer was left speechless over his wife's outburst, but as the levity of this situation sank in, that this woman was leaving him with

his_son, his bloodshot eyes narrowed into a glare fuming with outrage. His face turned a fiery red, the veins bulging from underneath his face, as though they could burst at any second. He was gritting his teeth so hard that the enamel began to crack from the pressure. He squeezed the navy-blue pen in his right hand so hard that the cap shot up into the ceiling, and the black ink oozed down his fingers and wrist._

_No sooner did Lady LaVey finish her breakup speech than a sharp pain caused her to double over, clutching her womb with both hands._

_"But right after I told him off, I went into labor."_

_By dusk, the expectant mistress was brought into the local medical clinic, laying on a spring-mattress cot with a white blanket covering her naked body, revealing only her head, arms, and spread-out legs. As she sat there breathing heavily and sweating profusely, the doctor was placing a metal dishpan full of hot water by her bedside, along with several stacks of white blankets, and washing a surgical scalpel in his right hand._

_"I hadn't told anybody where I was, but somehow, your father found me."_

_As if this mother didn't have enough to be distressed about already, she was given the unpleasant surprise of her ex-husband bursting into the room, panting as if he'd run all the way here, sweat dampening his brow, armpits, and the crease lines on his white gloves. The doctor made no attempt to stop him from kneeling beside his wife, who didn't have the strength to protest or send him away. Without a single word, he grabbed hold of her right hand, and before she could tell him to get away from her, her back jerked itself forward, and she started screaming at the top of her lungs, her face wincing with intense pain._

_"He acted concerned at first, and I was in far too much pain to focus on anything other than bringing you into the world."_

_Lucifer gently propped up her upper torso with his right hand, as though he were trying to help his ex give birth. With both the doctor and his patient preoccupied, neither of them noticed that, just behind her bare back, Lucifer was holding a dagger in the same hand, currently turning the blade away from her so he could support her spine with his knuckles. At the next ear-piercing scream, he turned the blade around, pointing the tip at the left side of her upper torso, and raised it a few inches away. For this intense moment, the present-day Lady LaVey allowed for the mental imagery in her listeners' minds to speak for itself, rather than narrating her final shriek._

_**AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!**_

_While the doctor proceeded with the delivery, covering his hands with the white towels, Lucifer pulled the dagger out of his wife's back, wiping the blade clean against the mattress, which was already sopping red from the blood spilling out her wound, and placed the weapon into a pocket inside his black coat, hiding it in his chest. At the same time, the doctor was swaddling and drying off a crying, newborn, baby boy, wrapping him in the towels. With an overjoyed smile, he was ready to hand the infant to his mother, but one look at her, and every inch of joy in his heart had dropped dead. Her widowed husband had lowered his head to the ground, masking his feelings of success as sorrow.  
_  
_"He'd killed me with such uncanny timing that he made the doctor believe that I'd died of childbirth."_

As the doctor stood there, stunned at the heart-wrenching sight before him, the boy fluttered his tiny eyelids open, barely getting a clear glimpse of his mother's blood-drained corpse. He was far too young to fully understand the scene before him, but something in his ten-second-old brain sensed something distressing from seeing his mommy so lifeless, and on the day they would've officially met.

"That was the last time

you _got to see _me."

_Soon, little Warden was sitting in his black, baby buggy, dressed in a black gown and bonnet, watching two men in black suits finish filling up a rectangular hole in the dirt with the same sand they'd just shoveled out. A stone cross had been placed to the vertical left, with a wreath of white roses leaning against it. Lucifer stood to the right of his victim's grave, holding his top hat over his chest, keeping his head low with a seemingly-mournful frown. The remaining citizens stood two feet from the grave, all wearing their own mourning attire, watching the ritual with heavy hearts._

Once the undertakers were done burying his late wife, Lucifer turned his attention to the public, prepared for what was probably his greatest performance yet.

"Gentlemen, words cannot begin to describe how much I shall miss my dearest Isabelle, and even less so am I able to imagine the pain my poor son is going through at such a young age. That is why, as his father, I have taken a solemn oath to raise him with the same integrity and devotion as his mother would've wanted. I shall mold this heartbroken child into an heir worthy of the LaVey family legacy, so that he may one day follow in my footsteps, and grow into an honorable man of justice for all who dwell in our beloved town. As part of upholding that oath, I have also taken the liberty of legally changing my child's name to one that would better suit his future stature."

He picked up his baby with both hands.

"I give you, my son:

Warden _LaVey!"_

_Lucifer held the child above his head, as if he were a trophy his dad had just won. Warden gazed at his applauding audience with a face of confusion and apprehension. He was still too little to grasp what was going on around him, but he couldn't help feeling this unnerving anxiousness somewhere in his baby gut, even though he had no idea what it was yet._

The present Warden was staring at his mother with a similar expression of distress as he'd worn in his infancy, too much so to even move his eyes and mouth. Jared, Alice, and the Twins had also been listening, though they still had enough of their bearings to express their dismay over this tragic tale.

"So you see, Warden," Isabelle continued, "Everything your father ever said and did to you was wrong. He never cared about what was best for you; you were just a means to carry out his legacy. He would never be happy with you until you started thinking and acting exactly like him, and would've given anything to save you from him."

"Why _didn't_ you?" Jared piped.

"The rules in the Kingdom of Heaven forbid any angel from interfering with God's plans for any soul on Earth."

_Where most angels would be relishing in all of Heaven's wonders, Isabelle, now glistening in a spectrum of gold, with a white halo and feathered wings, knelt down on the white-gold clouds, gazing at a mystic orb, about the size of a volleyball, that hovered one foot above her knees. At the center of this sphere's blurred edges was a cinematic image of baby Warden, being placed in his bassinet, wailing at the top of his little lungs. His father, covering his ears in agitation, stormed out of the nursery, and slammed the door hard, hoping the noise would scare him into shutting up. The poor infant let out a squeaky gasp, bouncing back a bit on his bottom. His dad's tactics may have gotten him to stop screaming, but his crying was far from over. With falsetto whimpering, Warden bundled himself in his tear-dampened, white, fleece blanket, the closest sensation to a warm hug as he would probably ever get in his childhood._

His mother did much of the bawling for him, watching his misery with unbearable amounts of heartache. As her baby wept in the orb, she embraced it around her arms where her son would've been held, and even kissed it on the area depicting his fuzzy, black hair.

"The Lord allows terrible things to happen to innocent people as part of a much greater plan later on in their lives, whatever that may be. I could see that I wasn't the only soul being treated under those same standards."

A few clouds to the left of Isabelle, she could see several other angels with their own orbs, whose fates had had similar effects on the living: a Native American chief watching his teenage daughter being crowned with the similar headdress he had worn in life; a blonde cowgirl in her early 20s, smiling as her cowboy lover placed a bouquet of wildflowers at her tombstone; a Native American mother whose baby was now under the loving care of a Caucasian, male pilgrim; a trio of African-American brothers, ages five, ten, and twenty, cheering as their white master was plunging into the fiery pits of Hell.

Isabelle watched these souls with a bittersweet smile. She was delighted that their loved ones were rising above their personal tragedies; if only her baby could be granted that same salvation as well.

"All I could do was pray with all my heart that you would someday be free from your father's wrath, and be granted a much safer, happier life as soon as possible. Until then, I refused to ever stop watching you, even for a moment. I had no need for food, water, or sleep as an angel, so I had all the energy in the world to always keep my eyes on you."

As the years rolled by, the Warden growing from infancy to toddlerhood, Isabelle never once lay eye or set foot on any other sector in Heaven where her son was not present. She devoted every second of her afterlife to monitoring her precious child, weeping and praying for him when he was physically or emotionally assaulted, and cherishing the rare occasions where he was genuinely happy. The day the heartless prison mogul finally kicked the bucket left Isabelle with very mixed feelings. She was thrilled that that monster had received long-overdue retribution, but it pained her to see her already-traumatized child scarred even deeper for life from witnessing his daddy's demise.

"I even saw the day your father was killed, and, fortunately for both of us, he was never once seen in Heaven, and I couldn't have been happier that you were in much better care at the time."

_Isabelle smiled as she saw Jarum carry her little boy on his shoulders, and tuck him into a small bed in a wooden bedroom, as opposed to the jail cell he used to sleep in._

"But then, one day, when you were almost a young man, something even more bizarre happened."

An eighteen-year-old Warden, dressed in his signature yellow blouse with grey pants and suspenders, had wandered off quite a ways from home, walking down the barren, desert fields, under a sky that was colored with the twilight palette of red, orange, yellow, and purple. He was taking an aimless, lonesome stroll, glumly kicking a small pebble in the ground, when, all of a sudden...WHAM! Warden was knocked back to the ground, his pants now dusted with sand.

"What the Hell?"

What could've possibly hit him? There was no wall, no fence, no weaponry in sight. There were no cacti, boulders, or even holes in the ground for anybody to be hiding in. His annoyance and curiosity piqued, Warden got back on his feet, and reached his right hand out in front of him.

ZZT!

Warden gasped. He couldn't see anything in front of him than the desert landscape, yet he could see and feel his hand touching some sort of tangible, invisible surface. The area where his palm and fingertips touched emitted a teal-blue glow, lighting up the edges of his gray gloves. His face beaming at this pretty effect, Warden tried placing his left hand toward the wall as well, and it, too, gave off a glowing, blue light. He playfully swooped his hands up and down across the invisible surface, the light giving off a comet-like tail during the milliseconds it was in motion. After a moment or so of playing around, another idea came to Warden's mind. He pressed the palm and fingertips of his right hand against the invisible wall, and with a concerted effort, the hand not only stretched past the surface, but was now coated with a clear, flexible, dough-like substance, still shining teal-blue. It was as if the hard material covering this barricade had suddenly become viscous and gluey upon the Warden's complete touch. His excitement escalating, Warden brought his right foot through goo, followed by his head, torso, and both his left arm and leg. As he was passing through this strange barrier, the areas glowing blue wherever his body made physical contact, he also seemed to be

disappearing_with it! With each limb that passed through, they also became as invisible as the rest of the wall, as if this goop was coating a layer of invisibility over him like paint. Once he'd squeezed his head inside, Warden was completely out of sight, much to the dismay of his spectating mother._

"I didn't know what had happened, but you just...vanished, into thin air. To make matters worse, not even

GOD_could find you anymore!"_

Isabelle glanced up toward the top of a mountain of clouds, which was hidden with a thick layer of gray fog. There, the Lord sat on his gigantic, gilded throne. He was a Caucasian giant so massive that only his bottom half could be visible to the naked eye. One would need to scale five million feet up just to get a mere glimpse of his head, shoulders, and forearms. He, too, had a mystic orb of his own, only his was one-thousand-times the size of Isabelle's, and portrayed the entire globe rather than one specific event or person in it. This atlas had been tipped so the Lord could get a better view of North America, where a white, holographic blip, shaped like a cartoon word bubble, was erecting up from southern Texas, portraying the exact same scene that Isabelle had witnessed only seconds ago! With a deep gasp from his echoing, booming voice, God spread his fingers out over the Texas portion of his globe, the view zooming closer and closer to him, as though the world were his digital map on a Smartphone. He could see every cactus, jackrabbit and snake, and even every single grain of sand in high-definition, but not a trace of Warden LaVey!

Fuming with outrage, God slammed his fists against the armrests of his throne, letting out a thunderous roar that pierced the ears of every single soul in Heaven. An array of lightening bolts burst out haphazardly from the cloudy mountaintop, breaking through the levitating fog that hid the rest of his appearance from any spectating angels below.

This certainly gave Isabelle quite a start in more ways than one. "With things

this_out of hand, I simply couldn't stand by any longer. You were the only thing making my afterlife worthwhile, and neither God nor I were going to tolerate losing sight of you, so, in the midst of His rage, I decided to officially leave Heaven by my own means, and search for you myself."_

_In the midst of her Savior's upheaval, Isabelle floated down, past the light-gold clouds that made up Heaven's primary grounds, and into the nighttime skies above the desert grounds of southern Texas. The second she was outside the boundaries of God's kingdom, her wings, halo, and golden colors had disappeared, in favor of the shades of green that she had worn to this day. This particular terrain was so empty that there was nobody to notice a female ghost floating from the clouds, and searching across the area where she saw her son disappear. She repeatedly called out his name and reached her hands out to find the wall he'd discovered, but neither it nor her child were anywhere to be seen or touched._

_"I've spent the last hundred or so years looking for you everywhere I could possibly go, if not in your home town, than anywhere else in the world, no matter how long it would take."_

_As the centuries waned on, from the Roaring 20s, to WWII, to the Civil Rights Movement, even to the 9/11 terror attacks, Isabelle LaVey had turned to every possible source she could find for some sort of lead as to where Warden had gone. Sadly, her lengths of travel were limited to how much she could remain hidden from the living, especially in broad daylight. In the early 1900s, for instance, Isabelle sat in the back row of a vaudeville theater to study Harry Houndini's magic acts, hoping they'd give her a clue as to how her son had vanished. He was hanging upside down from a rafter above the stage, tied up in a nest of ropes, from which he would attempt to escape all by himself. It wasn't long before a young man in the audience spotted her from behind, screaming and fleeing from the theater in panic. The spectators around him promptly followed, including Mr Houdini, who simply swung the rope off the rafter loose, landing safely on his two feet, and hopped as fast as his tied-up legs and body could carry him, not bothering to untie them first. Another day, Isabelle tried sneaking under the ground of a Concentration Camp, praying Warden hadn't been abducted with the rest of the emaciated Jews trudging and dying in the dirt. The prisoners here were not terribly fazed by seeing a ghost in their presence; there was already so much death and decay around them that they probably would've begged for the chance to see their loved ones again. Although Isabelle didn't find her son there, she did succeed in scaring the Scheiße (shy-tza) out of a pair of Nazi guards, especially when their bullets flew right threw her transparent body, not harming her in the slightest. Rather than leaving these poor prisoners in such dire conditions, Isabelle possessed one of the barbed wire fences to lift itself up into a gaping arch, allowing the surviving Jews to race off to freedom, wailing with joy to the heavens. The feminine phantom even made an appearance on a reality show in the 80s, where two Caucasian men in their early 20s were searching through an abandoned, American prison that was believed to be haunted. A cameraman had spotted her among the rows of cells, in which the inmate skeletons were left to rot. Her appearance flooded the newspaper headlines and TV news, with titles like "REAL GHOST SPOTTED" and "ACTUAL GHOST CAUGHT ON CAMERA," but not one of them could give her any answers about Warden LaVey._

_At last, Isabelle's timeline of flashbacks ended back in southern Texas, less than 24 hours ago._

_"After more than a hundred years of trying, I finally found you back at our old town with your father's ghost, and followed you back here."_

Now that Isabelle thought about it, perhaps it was those peculiar dimensions that God was unable to detect. The Lord may have worked in mysterious ways, but it seemed irregular, even with his _record, to create planes of sentient feet in houses of shoes, or an ocean of macaroni and cheese with dolphin-like peas. If they had some sort of divine purpose, such as when he had a whale swallow Jonah, or instruct Noah to build his famous ark, his followers in Heaven would've surely known about it. The very presence of Dimension 5612 challenged everything Isabelle ever knew about physics, human logic, and now, her own faith was being put into question, a notion even more baffling for her than the fact that she'd spent a hundred years looking for one person. It was almost as if she were forced to choose between two deities: God, or the Warden of Superjail._

"And now that we're finally together again, after so long, I want to do everything within my power to help you be free of your father's cruelty forever."


	7. Isabelle, Part II

"Warden...I-I had no idea. I'm so sorry..."

"Indeed." "Such a tragic sight to behold for one's beloved matriarch."

"Uhh, hello? Earth to Dumbass?"

"...I know that this is a lot to take in, honey."

The words of his mother and former colleagues sailed right past the Warden's head, and aimlessly drifted off into the air as wasted vocal energy. The mind of their listener had closed off any external communications, as it was preoccupied with the hurricane of anxiety and distress spiraling in the psyche. During his trance, Warden could visualize the highlights of his horrific past enlarging in a flash before his eyes, like a home video clip intensifying to match the visual and audio qualities of an IMAX film. The gut-wrenching sights and sounds of each scene pierced him like a bullet to his psychological heart: the prisoner forcefully giving him anal sex as a child; slicing his little puppy friend in half; witnessing his papa's untimely death, only to later witness his equally untimely resurrection; the yellow structures within Superjail crumbling into ruin; his father absorbing the Warden's powers, laughing maniacally while his son vomited and turned black-and-white. As horrid these incidents were, what pained him the most about them collectively was not just the extent to how much he had been physically, emotionally, and sexually harmed; it was the reality of the_merits_ behind the assaults.

For as long as he could remember, Warden had genuinely believed, deep down, he was never going to be like his father. No matter how brutally he had been corporeally punished, he simply didn't have the nerve to emulate his father's sadistic tactics and mannerisms an an "artist" of incarceration. Warden never once doubted how much he loved his own methods of running his prison, especially compared to his father's, but even with all he had come to adore about Superjail thus far, there was still this twinge of guilt that had been lingering in his mind since childhood; the guilt over his failure to ever please his supposedly beloved papa, coupled with the speculation of how his life would've turned out if it _had_ followed in his footsteps. There were rare occasions where certain events would trigger some of those unpleasant memories, and that tiny voice would scream as hard as it could to make itself heard. Unfortunately for it, Warden was never one to indulge in depressing feelings for too long (save for the times he'd throw himself a pity party when something wasn't going his way,) so he'd simply conceal that guilt in the jail of his subconscious, and fill himself with enough sunshine and rainbows to make him forget he'd ever heard it in the first place. The presence of his father's ghost had allowed that guilt to not only be released, but to dictate his every thought, word, and action, never to relent its grip until it was fully satisfied, even if it meant demolishing his most cherished home and workplace. Only now had that voice fully understood the futility of its very existence. Its quest would never be achieved no matter what it incentivized the Warden to say or do. With the abandonment of its previous mission came a new dominating motive for how to respond to this piercing realization: rampant outrage, with a sudden thirst for spilt ectoplasm.

_"AAAUUGHHH!"_

Warden made a mad dash for the door, but Alice and Jared grabbed hold of each arm, restraining him before he could even touch it. The enraged ex-warden violently swung his head and torso left and right. "LEMMIE GO! LET ME GO! I'M GONNA TAKE DOWN THAT BASTARD MYSELF!"

"SIR," Jared cried, "WE CAN HELP YOU GET SUPERJAIL BACK, BUT YOU'RE IN NO CONDITION TO FIGHT _ANYONE!"_

"I DON'T CARE! I WON'T STOP UNTIL HE'S SUFFERED EVERY LAST SECOND OF PAIN THAT _I'VE_FELT!"

"YOU _SHOULD_ CARE, ASSHOLE!" Alice snapped. "WITHOUT YOUR POWERS, HE'S GONNA FUCKIN' _KILL_ YOU!"

Isabelle watched her son's episode with panic, searching frantically in her mind for the proper reaction to the chaos before her.

"LEMMIE AT HIM! I WANT HIM! IT'S _MY_ SUPERJAIL, AND I WANT IT BACK _NOW!"_

The Twins had backed off into the right corner of the room, hugging each other protectively and shivering in fear. With her son ready to explode or burst off at any second, Isabelle went with what felt like the most logical, firm reaction at the moment.

"WARDEN, NO! _STOP!"_

Isabelle stood in front of the door, reaching her arms out to keep the Warden's body away. Her son was still frothing mad, but as soon as she'd blocked him, he stopped struggling, grunting out deep breaths though his nose and foaming mouth. Ordinarily, the Warden wouldn't allow anyone or anything to keep him from obtaining something he wanted, especially if he was _this_ desperate to get it, but there was something about his mother's ways of persuading him that left a much stronger impact on him in just these last few minutes than all of Jared's years of dire warnings, pleas, and educational lectures combined. Warden couldn't put his gloved finger on it, but who was he to determine that his mother's words were irrelevant now when he'd already taken such great heed of them thus far? While he still wanted to tear his father's soul apart, without any sort of plan as to how that would be accomplished (or even become physically possible,) he was willing to let Isabelle have the floor again if she truly had something important to say.

Isabelle let out a deep breath. For all she knew, her child could be too deranged from the years of abuse to ever be tamed again, even with the most coherent of reasoning, but she'd already searched this long just to be able to speak to him. She may not ever get another chance like this again, so it was critical that she make it count.

"W-Warden," Isabelle began, putting immense thought into each word before speaking them. "Y-you have...every right...to be angry at your father. If-If it were me, I'd probably want to exact revenge, too, but, a-and I mean this in the nicest way possible, you can't just run up to him and try to take him down by yourself. Without your, um, supernatural powers, he'll be much more likely to kill you, and I don't know if you'll ever be able to run your prison the same way again if you're dead. Plus, I don't ever,_ever_ want to lose you again."

Isabelle seemed to be getting through to the Warden's rattled brain. His glaring eyebrows loosened, and his growling relaxed into much more steady breathing. Isabelle continued with a soft smile on her face, gently stroking her fingers down the Warden's right temple.

"But just because you can't fight him right now, a-at this moment, doesn't mean you can't fight him at all. We can all help you stop your father _together._ That way, we can get back at him, _and_ you won't be harmed in the process. I'm not mad at you or anything; I just don't want you to get hurt."

Warden remained silent for several more breaths, the anger slowly draining out of him. As this firewall of fury subsided, it also unleashed a tidal wave of anguish to flood up his mind, as though his rage were some sort of dam to repress his core feelings of grief and devastation about coming to terms with the harsh truth about his father's motives.

Powerless to stifle his emotions any longer, Warden bit his trembling lower lip, and with high-pitched whimpering, he lowered his head and sank to his knees. Believing he had been thoroughly subdued, Alice and Jared let go of his arms, allowing him to dig his fingers into both sides of his hair. This agony festered inside him a second or two more, until at last, the Warden let out what was by far the heaviest, loudest, most heartbreaking cry out of all the fits he'd ever had.

_**"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH-HA-HA-HAAAAAAA!"  
**_  
As Warden wailed his broken heart out, frequently slamming his fists against the padded floor, Jared, Alice, and the Twins watched his meltdown with sympathy, while Isabelle shed silent tears of her own.

"IT'S NOT FAIR! IT'S NOT _FAIR!_ I GAVE PAPA EVERYTHING THAT I HAD, AND IT ALL TURNED OUT TO BE FOR _NOTHING!_ I-I DESTROYED MY OWN JAIL FOR _NO _REASON!"

While she watched her son weep, Isabelle could imagine the numerous other times she'd seen him cry out in agony: being ignored and neglected as an infant; the times where he was spanked by his father; the moments where he'd flinch in horror as his dad needlessly berated him; being forced to witness the executions of numerous prisoners. Without wasting a second more, Isabelle did what she had so desperately wanted to do since the day her child was born. She gave him a tender embrace, and at least a dozen kisses on his forehead, gently rocking him and stroking his back as he bawled on her shoulder.

"It's ok, sweetie." Isabelle sobbed quietly, "It's ok. Mommy's here. Mama's gotcha."

Warden was more than willing to accept his mother's hug. He may have had no concept of empathy, but never before had he felt so helpless, so defeated, even. He wanted a hug probably more than he realized it himself.

Isabelle tried to maintain a steady voice. "I know how much your father's hurt you, a-and I'll never forgive myself for saddling you with such a terrible father...but-but I promise, w-when all of this is over, he'll never be able to abuse you again. I'll make sure you're free from him forever."

Warden's crying softened a bit, taking a certain degree of comfort from his mother's words. After a minute of stroking and rocking him some more, Isabelle gave a shaky smile. "...Y-You know, even though I didn't mean to become pregnant, I never saw you as a burden or an unwanted commitment into my life. You've been a blessing since the very beginning, and while I was watching you from Heaven, I would sometimes hear or think of songs and lullabies I wanted to sing to you, especially when you were a baby. I think this one would suit you best:..."

As Isabelle gave her son her angelic serenade, she could envision the times she'd spent watching him from Heaven, the memories playing in-tune with each verse of her song.

-

_Come forth, my broken child  
Put your weary head to rest  
With these arms, I shall mend  
Your shattered bonds,  
For you are so dearly blessed._

I know life has not been kind.  
You've been left in fear and grief,  
But that's not what your life  
Was founded on.  
That, I pray, you will believe.

You, in the eyes of one,  
Were meant to flourish  
Underneath the sun.  
Nobody was brought  
Unto this Earth  
Without a purpose  
For their creation and birth.

It may not become clear now,  
But some day, I know you'll see  
Your life is valuable,  
My broken child.  
You mean the whole world to me.

You mean the whole world to me.

-  
  
Warden had fallen silent, lifting his head up and staring off into space, the tears still streaming down his cheeks. There was something extraordinary about the way he perceived his mother comforting him, as if her hugs, kisses, comforting words, and lovely singing had triggered a unique sensation in his mind that he had long, long forgotten. Warden struggled to find the proper terms to describe it. It felt happy, but that word alone didn't do justice. It was a much stronger kind of 'happy,' probably the strongest he'd ever felt, but not in the sense that he was giddy or excited. It was more like a warm, fuzzy happiness. Isabelle's hugs alone made her as cuddly as a man-sized teddy bear, but the heart behind that warmth made it even cozier. It was a sense of..._contentment_, a sweeping ease of mind that relaxed his entire soul. With that relaxation came a sense of _security, _as if no harm could possibly come to him while he was in his mother's arms. She felt like someone the Warden could trust with his very life. Though he had only just met her, her poignant story and actions, in the recent and distant past, depicted decades of devotion and integrity that he simply hadn't seen for himself, which didn't make it any less truthful, in his view. That was another good word describe this feeling, _devotion,_ but that _still_ wasn't quite enough! Devotion, contentment, security, warmth...what would be the proper way to describe_all _these terms put together? Just then, it hit him: **love.** There was no way it could be anything less. For the very first time in his life, the Warden of Superjail was experiencing genuine, sincere, unconditional love.

Now Warden remembered why such a feeling meant so dearly to him. Throughout his entire childhood, whenever something frightened or upset him, he would always turn to his father for some sort of comfort: a hug; a kiss; a pat on the back. Even simply telling him "it'll be all right" would have been enough if he truly meant it. Sadly, the Warden never received one iota of affection from his papa, leaving him with a bleak, empty void in his heart, almost like a psychological cavity, that longed to be filled longer than the Warden could recall. After enough years of being unable to fill that void, Warden, at some point in his youth, decided to ignore it altogether, no longer seeing any point in trying to fulfill such a futile wish. When he'd first constructed Superjail, he believed he could fill that void with all the magic and hardened criminals that his institution had to offer, and for a decade or two, it seemed to work. Now that he was finally experiencing the parental love that he had long desired, the superficial pleasures within Superjail meant a lot less to him, a phenomenon he hadn't experienced since the day he chose to burn up Superjail in favor of his new "firepower" with Ash.

Isabelle smiled in return, resting her head against her son's. "I believe it's not too late to still turn your life around. It'll take a long time, probably the rest of your life, but as long as I'm here, I'll work as hard and long as I need to to give you the happiness and peace of mind you deserve. I'll never give up on you."

Warden beamed, his face flushing into a dark-gray where it would've turned red. He loved this blissful warmth his mother was giving him, and if he were able, he would do everything within his power to make this feeling last forever.

Their present, yet forgotten, audience, Alice, Jared, and Twins, were watching this heartwarming scene bawling like babies themselves. As he saw his former boss reuniting with his mother, Jared took his wallet out from his left pocket. Among the chain of laminated photographs dangling inside was a recently-captured body shot of Jared holding hands with his own mother: a female equivalent of her male son, complete with an oversized cranium, with only her fluttering eyelashes, square bifocals, and short, curled, white hair as her distinct features. Alice envisioned a thought bubble over her head, portraying a flashback of herself as a toddler, playing dress up with an oversized sun hat, blue summer dress, and purple high-heels. Alice's mother, a ginger in her early 30s with "50's mom" curls, giggled at how cute her little boy was acting, and even left a red kiss mark on his left cheek, making him blush at her affection.

The tearful Twins turned back to each other. "It has been eons since we Ozzal abandoned our original mother." The right sobbed.

"That does not mean we are left with no one to thank for our existence!" The left whimpered.

"Agreed!"

Each Twin took out a single, sky-blue crystal from their pants' pockets, and held them over their heads. In a flash of teal-blue light, Ozzal appeared between the two. His size too large for such a confined room, his head and neck were forced to lean back against the ceiling.

"What in the name of Orion's heel?!"

"Father!" Both Twins bawled. _"We love you!"_

Without any hesitation, both Twins wrapped their arms around Ozzal's torso, bawling against his lower abdomen.

Understandably for their father, this was rather shocking, to say the least. "What has happened that has caused you two to weep like the precipitous slugs of the Calgaron Belt?"

Warden and Isabelle gaped at this bizarre sight for another moment or so, until Warden turned back to his mom with a sheepish smile. "Heh heh, things have changed quite a bit since the old days..."

Isabelle responded with a polite giggle. "Hey, I swam through a sea of macaroni and cheese just to find you. I think I've come to expect the unexpected by now."

"Well, I promise, when we get Superjail back, I'm going to give you the best time of your life!" Warden quickly noticed the slight error in that statement. "Er, _afterlife_, I mean..."

Isabelle chuckled again, and kissed his forehead. "I'm sure we will."

The two followed this cordial pact shared another warm hug.

-

While the rest of his family was smiling and hugging, Lucifer was drumming his right fingers on his mahogany desk, resting his scowling face against his left fist. Blackbird watched his master with concern while he munched on a saltine cracker.

With an impatient growl, Lucifer slammed his right fist. "What the Devil is taking those two so long?!"

At that instant, another sentient skeleton appeared, wheeling in a beige TV cart, carrying one of the monitors from the security room upstairs, along with a black DVD player and remote control.

His boss gave him a disgruntled sneer. "This better be important, Commander. My patience is running thin as it is."

Commander Humerus pointed his left finger bone to the label underneath the screen: "DOG EATERY." With the press of a button on the remote, the skeleton rewound the footage to the last several minutes before the camera was shut down. After three Dobermans were sent flying against the walls, the camera revealed the one Doberman standing on two legs, finishing off the final member of the pack. The Commander paused the footage once the camera got a full body shot of the soul who had possessed the Doberman to murder his own comrades.

_"AH!"_ Lucifer jumped back in alarm, his hands clinging onto his swivel chair behind his back. Just the very sight of his ex-wife's ghost sent his mind reeling, taking slow, shaky breaths as he struggled to process such an alarming sight. "...No. No no no no no no no. This-this has to be some sort of trick! That can't possibly be..."

Humerus pressed play on the remote. After Isabelle had released the guard dog from her control, she turned back around, and flew off-screen to the left. For better or worse, the immobile camera did not allow for adequate footage of the entire scene at play, and instead recorded the walls and floors where the rest of the dogs lay dead. Only Isabelle's hair and back remained visible for another minute or so, until she had left the room altogether, and Gary allowed for a closeup of the next best "bird" he had left, before tearing the camera off the wall with his bare hands. Blackbird chirped out a gasp, sneering at his old friend, gritting his beak tight.

Prior to seeing Gary on the screen, Lucifer returned to his seat. He did his best to switch back to the typical, tyrannical fury that would've been coursing through his veins on any other day. Despite his best efforts, there was still an anxious tremor in his voice and body that he had difficulty hiding. His face was also dripping with ectoplasm as a dead-man's alternative to sweat. "I-I should've known! The prisoners are conspiring against me, a-a-and that lying little slut has got them _fooled!_ Ohh, but I will _show _them! They'll know damn well who their _true_ master by the time _I_ get through!"

Lucifer grabbed his black walkie-talkie, his hand still shaking. "J-JARED! ALICE!"

-

"I WANT YOU TWO IN MY OFFICE AT _ONCE!"_

Everyone gasped at the angry voice coming from the receiving talkie sticking out of Jared's right pocket. The Twins hugged each other closer again, their father having left the scene only moments ago.

Warden scrambled behind Isabelle. "Mama, don't let him get me again!"

Isabelle wrapped her arms around her son's upper torso, sneering into the distance. "Don't worry, sweetie. I won't let him lay a single finger on you."

Warden sneered back, holding his mother tighter with a pouty expression and tone of voice, as though she were a special toy that he didn't want to share. "I won't let him come anywhere near you, either. You're _my_ mama, and nobody else can have you."

Jared stared anxiously at his former boss, finally obtaining a full grasp of the Warden's dire crisis at hand. There was no longer any doubt in his mind what he had to do next; he only wished he had done it much, much sooner. "Warden, you and your mother have _got_ to get out of here. It's my fault that your dad took Superjail away, and I'm not gonna let him hurt you again."

"What about you?" Isabelle asked. "Will you be all right?"

"Don't worry about us, m'am. Alice and I can hold him off long enough for you and your son to escape."

"Yeah," Alice added, pounding her right fist against her left palm. "We can handle that douche bag from here, though he'd probably kick _our_ asses with the Warden's magic and shit."

Alice's remark stirred an idea to pop in Jared's enormous head. "That's it! If we can extract the Warden's powers out of his father's ghost, and bring them back to their rightful owner..."

Alice smiled, pointing at the Warden. "He can use 'em to beat the crap out of his old man!"

Warden's face lit up, the rest of him eagerly jumping out from behind Isabelle. "And Superjail will be rightfully ours! C'mon, Mama! Let's do this!"

"No, Warden! Wait!" Isabelle held her arms in front of her son again. "It's too dangerous for you to go up there! I'll go with Jared and Alice while you stay down here, where it's safe, and we can _bring_ your powers to you."

"But Mom, that'll take _forever! _If I go upstairs _with_ you guys, I'll be right _there_ to take my powers back once Papa loses them! It'll be _way_ faster than just sitting down here waiting!"

"I know, but I _can't_ afford to lose you again." Isabelle stroked her left palm around the Warden's cheek. "If anything happened to you up there, I would never forgive myself. I'd really feel better if you stayed here, where it'll be safe. We'll help you get your powers back; I _promise_. Do you understand?"

Warden wasn't sure how, but the way his mother conveyed her dire warning invoked another unsettling notion in his mind. The stakes were higher in this battle than even somebody as imaginative as him could fathom. Who's to say that this uprising wouldn't result in Warden being separated from his mother again? It was incredibly unlikely that she would be _harmed_, per se, as the dead can't possibly be killed again, but if she could lose_him_ when she least suspected it, on the night she was murdered during her son's birth, what would stop Lucifer from attempting something similar to happen again?

"...Wh-why-why don't you just stay here with me?" Warden whimpered, hugging her close again with a sheepish smile. "I-I can't defend myself, either, you know."

At that, the left Twin chimed in. "We could assist you in providing additional protection from your abusive father."

"Indeed." The right Twin pulled out a pink crystal from his right pocket, about the size of a pencil. He then drew a distorted, pink oval around where the Warden was kneeling. Once the ends of the shape touched, the Twins immediately kneeled down behind him. In a matter of seconds, the outline emitted a bright-pink glow, and a thick, transparent, crystalline wall arose where the crooked ring was drawn, circling the Warden and Twins. The material grew about six feet high, and closed off the top as a dome roof above the heads of its captives.

"What the?!" Warden protested, punching and kicking from inside the crystal mini-dome. "Get me outta here!"

The Twins remained unfazed. "This crystal field has the durability to withstand even the most powerful of Earth weaponry." The right stated.

"Indeed." The left added. He then turned his attention to Isabelle. "We shall keep watch over the Warden while we, too, remain safe from his father's tyrannical reign."

Warden pressed his face and hands against the crystal walls, a single tear running down his face. "Mama, please! I wanna stay with _you!"_

It pained Isabelle to see her son so upset, but she refused to let sentimentality put him in potential danger. "Aww, I do too, sweetie, but I can't let you go up there and risk getting yourself killed." She then smiled. "I'll come back for you. You can count on it."

Warden sighed, not the least bit convinced. "...I _really _hope so..."

Isabelle kissed the wall closest to his forehead, leaving a pair of red-green lip marks in place. Warden's lower lip trembled; he wished that kiss could've at least been on his real head instead of being blocked by a crystal wall.

Sadly, it seemed Lucifer LaVey didn't need to be in their direct presence to spoil a heartfelt moment. "JARED, ALICE, DON'T MAKE ME COME _LOOKING_ FOR YOU!"

"C'mon, let's go!" Alice responded, pointing her right thumb over her shoulder.

Jared and Alice stood by the door, and Isabelle quickly followed. Alice carefully peeked her her head out of the room, turning her left and right three or four times. Once she saw that the coast was clear, she gestured Jared and Isabelle to come with her.

Warden felt his heart plummet as his mother turned off the light, and locked the door to the Delivery Room. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this desolate, even with the Twins keeping him company. Once Isabelle and his former coworkers had departed, Warden wrapped his arms around his chest, as though he were trying to give himself a hug.

He could almost feel that painful void emptying itself out.


End file.
